thakilla's blog

A couple of hero folds....

2010-06-03T02:36:00.000-07:00

Hand #1

5/10 Rio

4h 5h
6 way limp
J45 rainbow
BB leads out 50
I raise to 245
Button shoves for 410
BB calls 360 more
I call 155 more.

Turn K
BB shoves for 1k (i cover him)
I fold.

River 3

BB 44 set of 4's
Button 67 rivered straight

This was a pretty standard gross spot that you can end up in a pot that is multi-way and unraised. I didn't like calling the extra $155 on the flop, but I was getting such a good price it was just be ridiculous to consider folding. I thought that it was also possible that the BB could have had a draw because he knew I was not going to be able to re-raise since the button's raise didn't re-open the betting. If he goes crazy on the turn (like he did) I can be relatively sure that he isn't on a draw and was just trying to trap. It was a pretty easy fold, but it is never fun to put so much money in the pot and then just give up on it. When I put most of the money in I had no way of knowing that my hand wasn't the best so I think I played it pretty close to perfect.

Hand #2

5/10 Rio

2h2c in cut off.
6 way limped pot.

Flop Ad 2d 4c
Checks to me I bet 40
Button calls
SB calls
Utg shoves for 240
I call 200
Cut off makes it 800
I have 1200 left.
I fold
Cut off has 53o
Utg has 6d 9d

Turn Ah
River Qd

:(

Even though I felt like I had the utg player beat I still elected to just flat call the extra $200 on the flop because I had zero fold equity vs. him and I still had players left to act behind me. I planned on leading on any blank turn card for a large bet if any of the players behind me called the $200 flop raise. I assumed they would both be folding most hands and possibly peeling with some of their draws. I did not expect the button to be re-raising here. I just decided he was never doing this with a hand I was ahead of. I suppose he could have A4, 4d5d, or 4d3d sometimes, but I just felt very strongly that he smooth called my flop bet with a set of 4's and it was very likely that I was going to be drawing to only one out.

It turns out I made a good fold, but I would have made LOTS more money had I called, because I would have ended up filling up on the turn leaving them both drawing dead.

I really feel good about my live play. I have been very patient and made some really good folds and have only been on the fun side of a cooler once (my AA vs. his KK). Despite all that I am up about $3,000 in 4-5 sessions. That is nothing outstanding or anything, but I don't think everyone would make some of those folds and I have managed to turn what could have been a break even stretch into a +$3,000 stretch.

It's getting late and I am supposed to play golf in the morning....nighty night.

Live session: thoughts on a hand.

2010-05-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

I think it is very important for me to avoid getting burnt out on poker in order for me to stay sharp and play my best. I used to play for a month or so straight and then go on a mini-vacation somewhere for a few days or a week to help me recuperate. Lately I have been playing tons of online poker with no vacations, live poker, or really any days off mixed in. Not surprisingly my results have been really stagnant for a while now and I am starting to realize that I may be a little burnt out. Being burned out makes it soooo much easier to play auto-pilot style poker which is really just a mild form of tilt that is very hard to self-diagnose. It is so hard to diagnose that you usually don't realize you aren't or weren't playing your A-game until after you have taken your break and it has fixed itself. Also, I used to use live poker as a tool to keep myself fresh for online poker. Just mixing it up by doing anything other than the same grind everyday can be beneficial.

Anyway, today I decided to take the the day off from online poker and decided I was going to go to the Rio to sign up for the first $1k WSOP event. It seemed like I went about this early last year and they were open for registration already. However, I went tonight and all the doors to the registration were locked up with no one around. Ironically, these locked doors were directly under banners that read "Tournament Registration is open 24 hours a day". I guess this 24 hour openness doesn't start until tomorrow. Since I was near the strip already and I hadn't played online today I decided I would go play some live poker at the Bellagio.

Sometimes, you will play a hand that will totally crush your spirits and send your game/confidence in a downward spiral and it can take a while to recover from these types of hands. However, there can also be hands that can have opposite effect. I am hoping I played one of those hands tonight. Here is the self made hand history and then I will explain some of my thoughts on it.

5/10 NL Bellagio

I have 2h 2d utg
I limp,
utg plus 1 raise to 40
Call 40
Call 40
I call

Flop 2s Ah 9s
I Check
Bet 80
Call 80
Fold
I call 80

Turn 5d
I check
Bet 220
Raise to 580
I cold call 580
Bettor folds

River 4c
I check
Bet 1200
I have about 1250 in my stack left, but he thinks I have more than that behind.

..........???

I took quite a long time to think on both the turn and river (which I almost never do), no one called the clock (I can't ever remember having the clock called on me) and I eventually folded the river and showed my set of twos. I usually wouldn't show, but because I took so long to make my decision I wanted to at least show people I had a legitimate decision and I thought I might increase my chances of the guy saying or showing what he had. I realize not everyone is going to tell the truth in these situations, but I had a very strong feeling the guy was being genuine/honest when he told me "nice hand" and confessed that he had a set of nines.

I am not crazy about my turn play, but truthfully, I just didn't know what to do in this spot. Something just told me I didn't have the best hand on the flop, but it seems crazy, super nitty, and very exploitable to be folding bottom set on the turn here. In fact, it is pretty darn nitty to fold on the river in this spot.

I am not big on physical tells really, but this guy was VERY comfortable with his bet on both the turn and the river and I was certain he wasn't bluffing. I don't think he is value betting top two pair for this much money in this spot, because it is pretty much impossible for him to get called by anything he could beat. Also, when the original bettor folded on the turn he said "well, I can't beat both of them" before he folded which led me to believe he was folding some kind of big ace....if true that decreased the chances that the raiser had an ace in his hand. The hands I could beat on the flop/turn were top two pair or a pair of aces with a flush draw. I don't think this guy is capable of turning either of these hands into a bluff on the river after I have shown so much strength (or that I have a draw that would have missed and wouldn't be calling his value bet anyway or need to be bluffed out of the hand for him to win). It also crossed my mind that he could have had a 34 of spades (A4s and A3s are also possible) type hand and turned a gut shot making him a wheel. These hands would fit with all of his actions in the hand.

Basically, I am pretty sure and proud that I made the correct fold and it kind of boosted my confidence since I have had some trouble folding pretty much any kind of hand when I play live poker for quite a while now. It also helped my confidence when I picked up AA vs. another player's KK and doubled up about 5 hands later, haha. I felt like I had been immediately rewarded for my solid fold.

I am hoping this hand and a small break from poker will get my confidence going and I can put an end to this brutal break even stretch.

I will be playing event #3 of the WSOP, a $1K buyin, starting on Saturday May 29th, but probably not much poker until then.

Sorry this was so long, but it kinda felt good to get some actual poker content written down.

Another May goals update....

2010-05-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
I have played 66 hours so far so I am a little behind pace here. However, I got some super virus on my computer which caused me to miss a few days of playing. I ended up having to pay someone on the internet $85 to remotely access my computer and cure my computer of this virus. It is almost all better, but he still needs to fix a few things he wasn't sure how to fix the first couple of times he tried. He emailed me telling me he talked to one of his nerd friend/colleagues and he is confident he can fix the rest of the issues.

2. Play 50,000+ hands
I have played 32,017 hands so I am slightly ahead of pace to reach this goal.

3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
I suck. I have still done zero. Having to admit this sucks, but I could definitely be working on my game away from the tables much harder than I currently am. (Note to self....really do this!)

4. Make $12,000+.
I am up $1422 in cash games for the month so I am definitely behind pace for this goal, not to mention I am down about $2,000 in tournaments this month :( To make this even more frown worthy, I am actually running way above expectation for the month!

5. I will not play 10/20 or higher.
I have actually played a little bit of 10/20 (368 hands), but only because there were super big fish in the games. I am up about $1400 in 10/20 so it has worked out so far, but it really bugs me when I don't play the same in these games, because of the monetary difference.

Its not very much fun to update about NOT achieving the goals I set, but it wouldn't be very cool of me to only report goals being met. Anyway, there is still time in the month to turn things around.

May Goals update....

2010-05-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
I have played 28.5 hours so far and I missed the first couple of days of the month so I am on pace to meet this goal.

2. Play 50,000+ hands
I have played 13,610 so I am also on pace to reach this goal.

3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
I have reviewed about half of one player so far, while I was also playing a session so this goal has been a big fail up until this point.

4. Make $12,000+.
I am down $446 so I am certainly not on pace to reach this goal. However, I do have a 2.47bb/100 win rate this month I am just getting crushed at 5/10. If the variance evens out at the different limits I still have a shot at this goal.

5. I will not play 10/20 or higher.
I failed this one today, because there were TWO huge fish in the games (both lost at around 15BB/100 over a decent sample size). But I won so who cares!!!

I have had two solid winning days in a row so hopefully this is the start of my epic run I predicted a couple of blogs ago.

May Goals...

2010-05-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a pretty cool book, recommended by my buddy Blake, about psychological influences on people in all kinds of different situations. It confirmed some stuff about goals that I have known for a while, but gotten away from as of late. Basically, goals have a much higher probability of happening if you declare your goals and especially if you write them down. I used to always use this blog to write down goals and then use it to monitor my success. I had very good success doing this in the past and I am going to try to get back to doing that this month.

Goals for May:

1. Play 120 hours of online cash games.
2. Play 50,000+ hands
3. Review/analyze at least 10 regular players games to help me improve and exploit them.
4. Make $12,000+ (I don't really like monetary goals since they are out of your control a lot of times, but I am pretty good about it not affecting my focus/play. However, it will still feel good once I achieve it).
5. I will not play 10/20 or higher. Its not that I can't afford to play in these games, but I can't play my best in them and the losses affect me more than they should. 10/20 killed me last month and I don't need to play that high to win the amount of money I am trying to win. I feel stupid having to write this down, but hopefully it will help me to not play in those games.

Thats all for now, I hope to keep up with progress reports at least a couple times per week.

So far (after one session):
1. 3 hours
2. 1687 hands
3. 0 players analyzed
4. -$536

Even a beaten man can still ride a bike....

2010-04-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

So, I worked SUPER hard this month to climb out of the hole I started off in and even harder to overcome the terrible luck I had as well. It looks like poker is going to win and I am going to lose this month, because even though I still have a few days left in the month I won't be able to play because I will be traveling. I started off down about $7500 within the 1st two days of the month and I made it my personal goal to get winner by the end of the month no matter what it took. However, this is a difficult task when I seemingly ran under expectation every single day! I made a valiant effort and if I count rakeback I actually did have a winning month.

I ended up losing $884 (I also made about 2400 in rakeback) playing poker and ran about $13,000 below expectation for the month. There is nothing that can be done about that and it doesn't mean anything will be turning around in the future, but it sure doesn't seem fair. Actually, it is fair, because I have run good in the past. However, that doesn't make it seem any more fair!

That being said, I feel really good about my game and I am fully expecting a fantastic May....one where I do something crazy like win every day or put some crazy long stretch of winning sessions together. I haven't done that in a while and I feel like I am poised to have one of these runs.

So poker has left me a beaten man after the month of April, but in some good news some things are just like riding a bike and I proved that I can still bowl decently even after not having bowled in a year or so.

Me, Anne, Matt, Jeremy, Adria, Len, and Luchie went to Olive Garden for dinner and to Red Rock to bowl afterwards. Somehow I managed to bowl a 185 and a 210. I started off with a gutterball and everyone had a good laugh, but I got the last laugh :) Bowling seemed pretty easy tonight...the guy in the lane next to us suggested that I should join a bowling league because I was so awesome. Ok, I made up the awesome part, but he really did suggest I join a league. I am pretty sure this was his weak attempt to recruit me for his team. Sorry Charlie, I've got poker to play and can't be bothered with bowling for 30 weeks in a row or however long those crazy leagues are.

Its 8am and I have to get to bed....we leave for home tonight at 12:45am and I have to do some stuff to get ready to leave once I wake up. Nighty night!

Not much to report...

2010-04-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a long time, because it is no fun blogging about doing nothing special. Poker has been really slow for me lately. I have been running poorly (both in EV and in cooler situations), but continuing to work very hard on my game. It is pretty disheartening to put so much effort into it without getting the same return I would like to see. I know the games are much tougher now than they used to be, but as much attention as I put into game selection I should be winning at a much higher rate than I am. Oh well, more hard work and staying focused will end up solving the issue eventually so that is what I intend to do.

While there haven't been any poker successes to write about lately it is the time of the year that makes me feel most like a professional poker player....tax time. I went yesterday to get my taxes done and I'll be sending them off tomorrow. While I hate having to pay taxes it does make me feel pretty good about myself for having done so. It seems like people always want to know how you decide when you are a professional poker player. I think that a pretty definitive answer to that question is if you pay taxes as a professional poker player then you are one. If not, you aren't. If you do pay taxes as a professional poker player and continue to stay in action then I would say you are wildly successful. Think about how much of a rake that is to overcome! First you pay actual rake and then the government rakes what is left...that hardly seems fair. So even though I haven't been doing as well as I would like, I can hold my head high knowing I have paid my taxes and I am still plugging away.

Phone Blog...

2010-03-04T02:01:00.000-08:00

So, I was planning on playing a long session throughout the night, but full tilt is shutting down their servers for maintenance for an hour in about 45 minutes so I decided to would write a blog instead. It is no fun talking about poker when it hasn't been going very well so I decided to just go through all the random pictures on my phone and share some of them with you instead. In case you are wondering about the poker I already failed my new years goal of having zero losing months by having a losing February...that didn't take very long, huh? Oh well, on to the pictures in no particular order of importance. Enjoy.

This is how the people that showed up from Craigslist decided they would haul away our old love seat. Unfortunately, they brought a van back to get the couch and it didn't make for nearly as exciting of a photo op.

Now I will show you all of the awesome stuff Anne has cooked since moving in :)

Spaghetti Pie.

BBQ Chicken, Cheesy Potatoes, and Green Beans

Chicken and Ritz Casserole (I actually made this using my sister-in-law Sharon's recipe).

Sloppy Joes, Homemade Mac n' Cheese, Green Beans (this lucky meal was served to my desk while I was busy winning a tourney for $18K!).

Italian Chicken Strips, Greenbeen Casserole, Homemade Mashed Potatoes

Meatloaf, Greenbean Casserole, Homemade Mashed Potatoes with corn on top (just like it is supposed to be).

Buttons & Bowknots, the most awesome breakfast food ever...special thanks to mom for passing along the recipe to Anne!

Chicken Enchiladas, awesome.

Baked Ziti and Garlic Toast

Italian Chicken, Loaded Baked Potato, Garlic Cheese Bread (made by yours truly), and salad.

In LA I searched my phone for the nearest barber shop and went to "Frank's Barber Shop". I spoke more Spanish than "Frank" did English and we silently decided that "Frank" would just cut and style my hair however he decided he wanted to. He cut about 1/4" off my hair (I was well overdue for a haircut, btw) and this is how he chose to style it. Thanks Frank!

Anne and I during our 10 minutes stop at the Hoover Dam en route to Phoenix to watch Jeff play in the Phoenix Open.

Hoover Dam...at least the water at the bottom of it.

Anne and I after exploring the old Gypsum mining caves near our house.

Matt's friend Andrew, who was drunk enough that we were able to convince him the pool cue chalk smelled like blueberries. He had no idea why I was taking this picture and had to be shown this picture before he realized he had chalk all over his nose.

This was taken halfway through the window guy replacing my "vent glass". I had just loaded up all of our luggage in my trunk when Anne handed me some more stuff she wanted to go in her suitcase. I re-opened the trunk, placed my keys on my suitcase, put Anne's extra stuff in her suitcase, then shut the trunk...with the car doors locked! Thankfully, I have a spare key to my car...unfortunately it is in Evansville, oops! Our flight was scheduled to leave an hour and a half after me shutting the trunk with my keys in it so I didn't really have many other options except to SMASH out my own window with a hammer so that's exactly what I did!

Anne kissing the Elvis bust in Aria outside of the new Elvis-themed Cirque show.

The whole Steinback Family: Eric, Kelly, Carter, and Mulligan.

Carter and Eric during breakfast at the Cracked Egg.

Carter stretching.

My Ms. Pacman machine I received as my best man gift from Justin.

How all of Anne's crap...I mean precious belongings looked upon arrival after being shipped across the country. I kid, I kid of course ;)

Anne and I at Justin's wedding...yes I wore a top hat, gloves, tails, and even had a cane...as did the rest of the groomsmen/groom.

The players shaking hands at the end of the hockey game I went to in Prague

All the Euros I won playing poker in Vienna.

Tom Brady shops at Wal-Mart!

So does G.I. Joe!!

Ahhh, feels so good :)

2010-01-31T23:04:00.000-08:00

It doesn't happen too often in poker where you get total satisfaction. In cash games you could have always have done something different or better to squeeze out a few extra dollars. In tournaments you rarely win, but when you do win you forget about any mistakes you made or any small edges you could have pushed harder. If you win the tournament (without chopping) you accomplished the best possible result. Even if you would have played better you could not have made anymore money for that given tournament.

What I am getting at is....I won a tournament today! Matt was sweating me online and once I got down to heads up he suggested I mention making some kind of deal with my opponent because he felt like he was a pretty good player. He was a good player, but since I had been doing so well lately and I really wanted to just win something out right I opted not to mention it and just played him for the whole shebang. I caught some decent cards, played well, and made quick work of him to take down the $55 tourney with 1 rebuy and 1 add-on for a cool $18,665.

That was a fantastic cap to an already good month of poker for me and hopefully February will be just as productive. I doubt I will win as much money in February as I did in January, but if I can stay motivated and work just as hard I will consider it a success regardless of my results.

BOOYAKASHA!

Newfound work ethic :)

2010-01-31T04:01:00.001-08:00

Who knew I had it in me? I managed to reach my short term goal I posted in my last blog of getting to 100 hours played this month. That is doubly impressive for me, because I didn't get to play any poker until January 8th.

I also worked really hard on my game this week by working out some more situational math for the CAP NL games and having a few discussions with poker friends whose opinions I respect. I am really starting to make progress in my quest to learn the CAP games. I know this because I have managed to win money not at showdown over my last 25,000 hands (I know you non-poker players have no idea what that means and I don't feel like explaining it either. Just rest assured, it is hard to do and took me lots of work to get there.)

January was a really successful month for me and I look forward to working just as hard in February.

I reached both of my short term goals from last blog and I am on pace for every one of my new years resolutions! Booyakasha!

I think I might take tomorrow off from the cash games to play tournaments, unless the CAP games look amazingly good when I sit down to start playing. I am not going to mix cash games and tourneys because I think that hurts my results in both of them. Maybe I'll win a house tomorrow??

Year progress report...

2010-01-20T05:24:00.000-08:00

So far, so good! My results have been very good so far this year and I have definitely been on the fun side of variance lately winning more than my share of all-in pots. I didn't get started playing until the 8th and my playing time has been hit and miss since Anne and I have been doing so much stuff for the house. We also just had Eric, Kelly, and Carter stay with us for a few days so that cut in to my playing time a bit as well....not too much though...thanks Anne :)

I've managed to play 47 hours and 22,000 hands so far this year and I am up almost $7,000. I had a great session today and then another great late-night session where I won $5,300 all total. Hmmm, so I guess I wasn't doing all that great before today, but now I am!

I have been doing better working on my game outside of playing and I definitely need to keep that up. It is a very good thing when I get in a groove where I am working on my game...it kind of builds on itself and makes me want to work even harder.

Some short-term goals:

-I would like to make a push to get to 100 hours for the month so that would mean playing over 50 hours in the next 10 days. That is basically impossible for me I think, but if I can get in at least 30 more in I won't feel like a total turd.

-Continue to work hard every day and don't get cocky with my results. I want to focus everyday as if I hadn't won in a month straight and I on the verge of going broke. I am going to try not to use AIM or surf the internet while I play and I am going to really concentrate on making the best decisions and exploiting other player's leaks.

Its time to go wake Anne up (its 5:45am and she has to go to work)!

Failblog.org

2010-01-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

In case you have never been to the site failblog.org you should definitely check it out...you can't count on it to waste a few hours of your life for sure.

Promoting that website isn't the purpose of this current blog, but it is definitely an appropriate title since I am recapping how I did on my goals for 2009.

Here were my goals from 2009:

1. Improve my poker game on a daily basis as much as possible.

Result: FAIL. I pretty much abandoned working on my poker game and took my ability for granted for most of 2009. I did start working really hard on my game towards the end of the year and my results showed it with great results to end the year.

2. Buy a house.

Result: WIN! I did by a house and while it was much more work than I bargained for I am very proud of it now.

3. Play 1300 hours of online cash games and log 600,000 hands.
a. This equates to playing about 31 hours per week for 42 weeks per year and averaging around 6 tables at a time.
b. At my current lifetime win rate of around $118/hour I would make around $150,000 and I think I can realistically expect to make over $220,000 at the limits I plan on playing (3/6 and higher) with the potential to make $300k+

Result: FAIL. I played a little over 800 hours and only manager 357,155 hands online. I did play PLO for a good portion of the year so that can explain some of the decrease in hands, but so few hours in an embarrassment.

4. Weigh 200 pounds or less by 2010, I am currently around 225 pounds after an astronomical surge in weight gain caused by my week in Cabo.

Result: FAIL. I am currently 235 pounds...awesome huh?

5. Save a minimum of $10,000 in some form for retirement and $15,000 in other general investments.

Result: Minor FAIL. I don't think I saved this much, but I did max out my ROTH IRA and save a little bit extra on top of that. It isn't quite as easy to save when your results aren't what you planned on and I spent a decent chunk of change on the house.

6. Prepare to buy a second house sometime in 2010.

Result:This seems a bit far fetched, but I would love to do it provided a good year of poker.

7. Get married and have kids….GOTCHA!

Result: While this seemed totally impossible and was an obvious joke at the beginning of 2009 my girlfriend's dog is sitting on my lap as I type this because she is scared of the vacuum Anne is running in OUR bathroom in OUR house....crazy, huh?

Overall recap: Poker was not as successful as I had hoped for 2009, but it was a good year overall for sure.

Goals for 2010:

1. Play 1200 hours of online poker (more wouldn't be such an awful thing, but my history suggests that is nearly impossible).
2. Max out my ROTH IRA ($5,000)and accumulate another $5,000 to be saved and used for future money making opportunities.
3. Work very hard to not only stay ahead of the poker learning curve, but excel more than I have in years past (I have no excuses not to work as hard as I possibly can, but that is very tough to maintain).
4. Put in some type of effort into learning more forms of poker, because I am certain that poker will continue to move in that direction.
5. Have ZERO losing months (as I did in 2008).
6. Sigh...get in better shape. Who doesn't say this around new year? It should help having my dietitian girlfriend around though.
7. Set lots of short term goals throughout the year to help me get to the above goals.

These goals are a little more vague that past goals. I don't really like the idea of goals being vague, because it is hard to measure success. The reason they are vague is because I had not put too much thought into goals for this year until now. I just wanted to get something written down before I got started playing for the year. Yes, January 8th is my first day of poker in 2010...in fact I have only played about 4 hours of poker since December the 15th! On a side note, I did manager to dominate the leader board on pokertableratings.com for 3/6 CAP NL games for the month of December despite only being able to play half of the month :)

Short term goal:
Play 12 hours of online poker and win $1,000 before we have to start unloading and unpacking the moving truck on the 12th.

plane blog

2009-12-19T23:56:00.001-08:00

Time heals all wounds, but it doesn't take much to re-open them...

When I flew to Hawaii from Chicago about 4 years ago it was one of the most miserable times of my life as I sat in the middle of 5 seats in the middle section of the plane for 7 hours. Now all I really remember is how much fun I had in Hawaii and the flight is hardly a memory anymore.

Now I am on my way to Prague somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and we still have 2 hours left in our flight. My neck, both shoulders, both knees, and my back all hurt and I can't understand why anyone ever chooses to take flights this long. This feels like the longest 7.5 hours of my life...by a long shot. Nevermind that we already flew from Evansville to Chicago before this flight and we have a 4 hour layover in London and another 2 hour flight from there to Prague! Oh ya, we had to sit in our seats for an hour and a half while they de-iced our plane before we started on this wonderful journey.

I know that I will forget how much it sucks to be on flights like this and I'll be pumped about my next vacation to a far away land, but right now I'm making a completely empty promise to myself to never go on a flight this long again....it's the worst!

Lasik and poker....

2009-12-07T01:17:00.000-08:00

My Lasik surgery went smoothly as expected. I did manage to stay up the entire night before so that once I was done getting my eyes lasered I was able to sleep through most of my recovery. Thanks for the tip Landon! Getting the surgery done wasn't painful at all, but it was a rather uncomfortable experience watching and being totally aware that someone was about to cut my eye and basically make me go blind for a few moments while he shot lasers into my eye. About an hour later the numbing medicine started to wear off and my eyes felt scratchy and really sensitive to light, but like I said I was able to sleep through most of that part. The tough part about sleeping now is that I have to wear some stupid goggles WHILE I SLEEP to make sure that I don't rub my eye throughout the night. I also have to wear those same goggles in the shower, because I am not allowed to get any water in my eyes for two weeks.

The next morning and about 20 hours after my surgery I was able to see 20/25 and they said there was still some swelling so hopefully my vision would still improve over the next week or so. I also see some decent sized halos around lights at night which they said should be gone within 6 weeks. It doesn't seem to me like my vision has gotten any better (maybe even a bit worse, but I am not sure) since I had my checkup the next morning. It is kind of annoying to only be able to see "good" and not great. I was used to not being able to see perfect when I wore contacts all the time, but that was because I wore each pair for so long I usually had an old/dirty pair in. It didn't bother me so much then, because I knew it could be fixed by cleaning them or getting a new pair. I don't think I'll be too happy if my permanent vision is always just ever so slightly out of focus.

Anyway, I'll try not to worry about that too much until it hasn't gotten better after the amount of time they say it should take to improve all the way.

Poker has been ok lately. I am really working hard on trying to figure out the CAP No Limit games. There are tons more fish that play in those games compared to the regular No Limit games and I am trying to take advantage of the current state of the games. Ideally, I will get really good at the CAP games just as Pokerstars adds CAP games to their site and the games are extra juicy! I don't know of them having any plans to do that, but surely they will have them one day.

I think I am gonna go take a quick rest and then maybe put in another session for the day.

TTFN.

Audio Blog...

2009-12-03T17:52:00.001-08:00

FileDropper Free File Hosting

I did an audio blog today driving in the car. It's about 3.5 minutes long and this was the first way I could figure out how to host it so you will have to download the file to listen to it. I hope it works for anyone that wants to listen.

So I was doing some thinking in the shower...

2009-12-03T04:12:00.000-08:00

...btw, lots of great thinking can be done in the shower.

Anyway, I had yet another epiphany about how lucky I am. I don't mean lucky in that I get luckier than most people (although that may be true as well), I mean that I am so lucky to have the "job" that I do and also to have the mental capacity to be successful at it. While I realize how lucky I am I realize what a shame it is to not try my absolute hardest to maximize my ability. People all over the world work much harder than I do to make way less money due to some or many different circumstances. Some of them aren't as smart, weren't lucky enough to have their passion to be as profitable as mine is, are smarter and work less hard than I do, or any other excuse you can think of. None of that should concern me. The only thing I should be worried about is maximizing my potential.

Anyway, I motivated/depressed myself thinking about how many great things I could accomplish if I put max effort into improving myself/poker game. I have an amazing head start on lots of people and I hope I can continue to progress at a pace that I know I am capable of.

I suggest you do the same.

Trying to keep pace...

2009-11-24T04:08:00.000-08:00

Blogging breeds more blogging and I'd like to do a better job of updating my blog so I am going to force myself to write this entry while I can't sleep....also it will allow me to waste time instead of packing and doing a bunch of other crap that I need to get done before I get on my flight in 8 hours.

Anyway, it is almost time to re-write new years resolutions and re-examine my old ones. I'll save the details for a later blog once my year is complete and a new one starts. Just rest assured that I failed pretty miserably again in achieving my goals. It is so hard to stay motivated for an entire year and I had way more swings this year than I have had in years past. I also ran about as much below all-in expectation this year as I ran above it last year. The games have gotten tougher, I didn't work on my game as hard as I could have, and I struggled with playing by best poker throughout a big part of the year which doesn't usually happen to me for extended periods of time. Whatever the causes may be I have no problem admitting that I am fully responsible for my results not meeting my expectations.

I am in a pretty good mindset right now and I have been working hard at improving my focus and attempting to improve my game at a rate that is faster than the learning pace of the rest of my competition. I feel like I am a better player than I was a year ago, but I also feel like my competition has improved more than I have in the past year. It is very important to be ego-less when it comes to this battle of improving vs. the competition. It does you no good to get better if everyone else is getting better faster than you are....although that is better than not improving at all, because it is a FACT that your competition will be getting better and even people that used to not be able to compete with you will outwork you and pass you by.

I am not yet writing my goals for 2010, but they will be geared around me vowing to outwork my competition. I know I don't always stick to my goals, but it is so important to do this that I don't really have any other choice.

Good night and get to work before your competition passes you by.

1st Video Blog

2009-11-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

I realize I mumble and I even tried extra hard to enunciate, but you'll see how well that worked. ARGH!!!! The sound is off with my video and nothing is more annoying than that. I don't know how to fix it and I am not saying all of that again. Just close your eyes and listen...sorry.

I don't know why some of these pictures are so small, but I am running out of patience so just deal with it!

John and Janie holding Conner, Jan's youngest kiddo:

Here is a picture of our crew from Florida:

Our fishing crew posing with our catches:

Landon and Scott during cornhole:

I never got any pictures from the lake this year, but this picture was from the previous year's annual trip to the lake and Patti's (the home of the best 2 inch pork chop ever as well as other super delicious food)...sorry Anne!

A group photo from our golf scramble in Bakersfield:

Carter Ethan Steinback:

Here is Eric's dog having a party with himself during my visit:

In case there are any wives, girlfriends, or mothers that are worried about all of the bad things guys do while they are away at bachelor parties here is a glimpse at what really goes on....For some reason Matt enjoys faux having his way with an innocent helpless friend on occasion. This time it just so happened to be poor Andy that was the sacrificial lamb for everyone else's laughter. Highlights of the video are my younger brother laughing at the very beginning and then Zach saying "look how bad he wants it" about halfway through.

Here is the map of all the traveling I did during my trip...roughly 8018 miles in case you were wondering.

View Larger Map

Boring poker blog.....

2009-09-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

My blog started out having almost 100% poker related content and in the last year or so I have really not enjoyed writing about poker so I try to write blogs that are entertaining to read and about stuff other than poker. It gets kind of monotonous to write about poker day after day...good day, bad day, blah blah blah. I also have noticed that anyone who reads my blog must think I am a bagillionaire, because I really don't like to write about big losses. Its not like I am trying to make myself look like a better player or that I never lose, I just don't like dwelling on negative stuff and I doubt anyone that reads my blog does either. It hasn't been a particularly good year of poker and I suppose it is possible that it could be somewhat attributed to me getting away from thinking about my game during blog writing sessions. That is what I intended for my blog to be for in the beginning. I wanted something to make me responsible for my results and also a place to write down thoughts or ideas I was currently having about poker. An obvious benefit of doing this was that I could go back and re-read old blogs to see what I was thinking whenever I wrote them. However, just the simple act of typing out your thoughts makes them much more clear cut in your mind and makes them much easier to remember and apply in the future.

I read another poker player's blog and someone he respected had suggested that he keep a notebook on his desk so that he could record notes after each session and then review them before starting his next session. It seemed like such a novel idea to me that I began to keep one myself...and then I thought "wait a minute, I am already supposed to be doing that in my blog!"

So, I apologize to any of my readers that get bored by the poker content, but I am going to make a concerted effort to get back to writing about poker. I have been playing PLO lately and my results have been pretty awful after having just looked at my stats filtered for PLO only. After 57,000 hands I am down $859. My all-in EV is +$11,308, but that doesn't really make me feel any better. I have learned quite a bit about the game since I have been playing it, but I still make tons of mistakes that are the reason for my poor results. It does make me feel a little better that I have an overall win rate of 3.98bb/100 and the reason I am losing is because I have had such horrendous results at higher limits. I might be able to make more if I would switch back to no-limit, but I know how much of an edge is possible with the current state of the PLO games compared to the NL games. Even if I am not good enough to have a bigger edge in the PLO games yet I know that with some work I can be.

This has gotten pretty long and I have some more to say, but I don't want to get burnt out writing this one blog so I am gonna call it a night and hopefully I'll be blogging much more in the near future.

Things are good?

2009-08-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

I am going to try and buck my latest trend of every day that I have a good day or stop for just a second to pat myself on the back I follow it up with some ridiculous downswing or horrible day. So I am somewhat reluctant to say.....I had a very good day of poker. I thought it might be my most profitable day of cash game poker ever, but upon referencing an older blog I fell just a tad short. I won $2,444 online yesterday playing about 4-5 hours of PLO and then I was bored and decided I would go play some 5/10 NL at the Bellagio since I was a little short on cash. For the second straight time I couldn't keep myself from playing in the 10/20 game. The game was absolutely FANTASTIC and I ended up winning $9,020 in about 9 hours despite only buying in for $2,000. It didn't really matter how much I bought in for since I was never all-in anyway. I didn't mean to play that long, but I just couldn't let myself leave such a good game. That is 1 day total of $11,464 which is apparently my second best day of cash game poker ever....I set my record in this blog with a 1 day total of $11,578.

There was only one hand that I did anything other than what I consider straight forward ABC poker and it resulted in one of the biggest hands of poker I've ever won. I made a quick note on my phone after it happened so I could re-evaluate my play later. Here is my homemade hand history:

Ad5d in SB w/$4,800 starting stack
Raise to 80 + 2 callers
I Raise to 440 + 1 caller (cutoff)
Pot:$1050
Flop Ah 9c 3c
I tanked and check called $1k
Pot:$3050
Turn 5c
Check call $1600
Pot:$6250
River Js
Check call $1k
Pot:$8250
Insta muck from C/O
New stack $8800

He just played the hand so strange that I couldn't put him on anything that made any sense so I just kept check/calling like a donkey....oops!

Here are some examples of how good the game was. Some kid was short stacking for $800 and I knew he was just looking to gamble and get it in at some point and I had already made up my mind I was going to try to bust him before someone else did. I ended up getting it in with my 77 vs. his AKs and I won. We then allowed him to rebuy for his last $785 even though the min buy-in is supposed to be $800. Next hand he tripled up with two overs and a flush draw against someone else who had a bigger flush draw and some other random hand when he hit one of his overs. So, he should have been busted for good there, but he continued to run super hot. He played a hand soooo bad where it was obvious he was pretty much drawing dead when he got it all-in 3 ways again for about $3500 on an Ax As 2s board with AK. He was up against a flush draw that was drawing dead and Ax 2x for a full house. Anyway he hit a King on the river for an $11k pot. Finally, Jean Robert Bellande joined our game and he is beyond bad. He was upset that he had somehow just lost $2,000 and his bankcard from his pocket and he suspected that a stripper he had just gotten a lap dance from was the culprit. Anyway, there was about $300 in the pot when the following mind boggling hand went down. The flop was Qd 8d 5h and JRB and short stacking kid (now with about $7500 in front of him) both checked and the button bet $100. JRB called and SS Kid made it $600. Button folded and JRB re-raised to $1600. The SS Kid thought forever and kept asking JRB if he had a set of queens...eventually JRB said "I promise I don't have a set of queens" to which the kid snap declared that he was all-in....for $7,200! JRB obviously insta-called him and then they started talking about making a deal and the kid offered to just chop the pot evenly before either of them knew each other's hand. JRB said there was no way he could give him an even chop, but wouldn't tell the kid what he had. The floor came over and told them they couldn't make deals anyway and JRB got all pissed and to try to get a deal done more quickly he finally showed the kid his hand....he had Kc Qc?!?! The kid then announced that he couldn't chop with him anymore because he was "owning him" and he turned over his hand....AQo and told the dealer to "run em"!!! The turn and river were both bricks and some how this kid just won a $15K+ pot with one pair after rebuying for $785 about 3 hours earlier.

This is way too long. I'm done.

Jurasic Poker: Part 2!

2009-08-05T02:39:00.000-07:00

Whenever you finish a great day of poker there isn't anything much more satisfying that staring at your graph for a bit and patting yourself on the back. Sometimes after you have played too long of a session you can start to see some very strange things if you stare at your graph long enough. I did this once before and the things I saw inspired the wonderful artwork that appeared in this blog: http://thakilla.blogspot.com/2009/05/jurrasic-poker.html

This time while staring at my graph and patting myself on my back a T-rex jumped out at me and I immediately knew that I had to create another masterpiece.

Without further adieu I give you Jurassic Poker:Part 2 (the T-Rex).

It felt very good to go from stuck almost $2200 to up almost $4700 in about 1700 hands.

The evolution of a mustache...

2009-08-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

So Josh dared me a while ago to grow a mustache. We discussed some type of prop bet, but I wanted to be able to shave it in case some type of situation arose that I really didn't feel like being embarrassed in. Therefore I decided to do it just on a dare. I chose a time when I thought I would just be staying around the house and playing poker without seeing too many new people that I would have to either explain why I had a horrible looking mustache on my face or just swallow my pride and pretend like I really preferred to have a mustache. I planned on shaving it before I went to caddy for Jeff, because I didn't want to run the risk of being on TV with a mustache or even worse having Jeff win and me being forced to keep my mustache forever due to its good luck! Once Jeff decided not to play I decided that I would wait until Matt and Brooklyn came in town and I would show it to them before I finally shaved it off.

Anyway, here is the progression of my Mustache via some crappy quality pictures taken by my webcam. Enjoy!

As you can see by the end of my expiriment I had really turned into a full grown man with a Burt Reynolds quality mustache....actually you can see that I officially grow the worst mustache in the history of mustaches and for some reason I grow ZERO hairs on what my little brother tells me is my philtrum. Believe it or not I could put my index finger on my philtrum and not touch any hair on either side!

I hope all 6 of my readers enjoyed the evolution of my mustache as much as I didn't enjoy letting it evolve on my face!

Another interesting fact about my mustache...I won about $9,000 and ran pretty well above expectation over the course of the 2 weeks or so that I had that hideous thing so maybe there was a little luck oozing out of the stash. If I start running bad again he may have to come back. So if you know what it good for both of us do your little rain dance to the poker Gods or whatever it is you do that you think will help to keep me running well.

Until the next mustache experiment.....this is me saying Adios Senor Mustache!

Well that didn't last long....

2009-07-31T01:19:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-07-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-07-24T17:39:00.001-07:00

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....

2009-07-18T02:47:00.001-07:00

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....

2009-07-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Very proud day of poker....

2009-06-25T03:37:00.000-07:00

Pretty much anything that can go wrong in poker has been going wrong for me lately and it has been taking a toll on my mental stability. It is just one of those ruts that any poker player has been in many times...every time you get all your money in the middle you just get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach that whatever card your opponent needs will be the next one off the deck. No matter how strong your hand is you can never be comfortable when you are in all-in situations. Josh and I often talk about how we "know" or we can "feel" sometimes when we are going to lose and it does seem uncanny how often that horrible feeling turns out to the correct. However, we also talk about whether or not we actually get that feeling or if we only notice/remember it when we end up losing the hand (this is the most likely case). I always try to maintain a really positive attitude when faced with all-in situations. Some people root against the cards that their opponents need such as when they say "No Ace, No Ace!". I advocate all of my friends to try to change their attitude and be more positive when they are all-in and to choose a specific card that they want to see and cheer for that one. After all, it is more fun to root for something than against it and this could help to keep a positive mindset. I usually choose one that will make me win the hand, but doesn't improve my hand (assuming I got my money in ahead) For example, if I have pair of Aces and they have a heart flush draw I will choose the 7 of clubs to root for. Just so you know, I am only talking about online poker. One thing you will never see me do in your life is to audibly root for or against a card while playing live poker unless I am jokingly doing so. Also, if you are one of the people that do that you can assume I think you are very annoying to play poker with, especially if I am having a losing session. None of this really matters in the grand scheme and I am not sure why I wasted so much time writing about what boils down to being nothing more than stupid poker superstitions. However, if you can do anything to help keep your thoughts positive while you are playing it will serve you very well in your decision making and tilt control. I suppose if you have to be superstitious to stay positive then go for it.

I digress...I have been getting the horrible feeling that I am going to lose during all-ins ALOT lately and I have been losing WAY more than my fair share of them. I am about $16,000 below expectation this month and it REALLY messes with your confidence to run so poorly. However, today I fought very hard and refused to let running badly stop me from having a losing day of poker. I lost my VERY first hand of the day for a full buy-in at $600 PLO...what a great way to start. The bad news is it went down hill from there. Before I knew what hit me and about an hour and a half I was down over $3600 and my confidence was reeling pretty badly. I took a short break to regroup and got back to the grind determined to out work the bad luck I was having. I got to within $500 or so of being even, but ended up losing about $950 in a 5 hour session. I then went to meet Clint, Charlie, and Tyrone for dinner at Noodles. After dinner I came home and got back to the grind. Somehow after 8 hours of playing today I ended up winning $1434 despite running $1200 below expectation. I have had much bigger winning days than today, but staying so focused and determined makes this win feel sooo much better. I look forward to continuing to crush their faces tomorrow.

Here is what an 8 hour day of determined playing looks like in graphical form:

That's it Mr. Anonymous, you've done it now...

2009-06-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

This comment was left after my last blog about how I had been running poorly in tournaments by none other than "Anonymous".

Anonymous said...

Last confrontation of tournament means little -- shouldn't you be focusing more on hands prior to your last coin flip?

What caused you to be in such a desperate situation?

I have ranted before about how anonymous comments drove me crazy, but I just now got around to making it so you have to be logged in to leave me comments.

I don't know who this person is that left it, but if your purpose was to needle me about running poorly in tournaments and poker in general then you played the game well, and I tip my hat to your creativity. If you were being serious and trying to get me to re-evaluate my play leading up to my "desperate situation" then you failed at the game. Afterall, it would be very counter-productive for me to try to learn how to not be card dead for hours on end.

In other news, I played another $1,500 event yesterday in which I once again did not make it out of the second level of blinds. I have also been getting my face smashed when I play poker online too. I am trying my best to maintain my sanity, but that is not coming as easily as it normally does for some reason. I am looking forward to the houseboat trip at Kentucky Lake over the 4th of July weekend....it will be a much needed break from poker. Until then, I will continue to grind my life away and hopefully start playing and thinking about poker in a little more positive manner.

I lied....

2009-06-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to get luckier in my next wsop tourney or the one after that. I have played 3 tourneys and lost all 5 coinflips I was involved in.

I lost 33 vs. K9 (52.5%)
I lost AK vs. QQ (42.6%)
I lost QJ vs. 33 (48.6%)
I lost K9s vs. QJs (56.2%)
I lost open ended straight flush draw vs. one pair (49.9%)

Winning any one of those could have greatly impacted my chances in any of the tourneys, but it wasn't meant to be. The odds of me losing all 5 coinflips are 3.04%.

I really don't think I could have done anything any better than I did in the tournaments I played and that is why tournaments REALLY suck. I will not be playing the main event this year. I don't feel like wasting $10,000 and being at the mercy of being card dead and/or being unlucky in another forced coinflip situation. The good news is I won't have to leave my houseboat trip a night early like I thought I would to make it back to play in the main event.

Josh and I talked about a possible prop bet of some sort where I have to grow out ONLY a mustache and no other facial hair for at least one month. I have never had any facial hair other than whatever grew during lazy periods of not shaving. I think it would be pretty awesome if I grew a Jim Dangle style mustache, but I am not even sure if I am capable of it.

If you guys are lucky maybe I'll grow a sweet mustache and take a picture for you wearing some shorts like his too.

So I finally figured out how I am going to do better in my next WSOP event....

2009-06-01T17:17:00.001-07:00

I finally figured out what I have been missing from my tournament game....I need to start getting luckier! This is not a bad beat story or even a bad beat story disguised as a regular story. This is just a story about how much luck is involved in tournaments. I played in the $1,000 NL WSOP Event #4 and busted sometime in the 5th or 6th hour. I didn't make any mistakes or do anything that I wish I would have done differently and I still didn't win or even cash, but that is the nature of tournaments. It is possible there were a few spots that a really great tournament player might have squeezed out a few extra chips here and there, but I played to the best of my ability.

Twice at my table people had pocket aces while their opponent held pocket kings. Both times the aces held up. Its not like either player did anything wrong or even anything well in either one of those hands. When two people happen to get dealt those two hands all of the money is going to go in the middle (barring some extreme/weird situations) and either one of them is going to go broke or someone is going to double up. When you get dealt AA or KK you are prepared to hopefully win a big pot, but you at least want the chance to play a big pot with those hands.

I got dealt Kings once and Aces once. Both times I happened to be in the cutoff and it was folded to me. Both times I made my normal raise and both times everyone folded behind me and I won the blinds. Its not like I played my hands any differently than the people that doubled up with aces at my table would have played them. I just wasn't lucky enough to get involved in the same situations that they were.

There are other times in tournaments where action is forced in ways that it wouldn't be in a cash game. For example: I raised on the cutoff with 33 and the short stacked Pokerstars pro Dario Minieri raised all-in just like I suspected he would be doing in the near future. I already knew he would be doing this with a very wide range of hands and that eventually I was going to end up in some type of race situation with him. This time he had K9o and he caught a 9 on the river in about a 4k pot (when the blinds were 75/150). Then about 45 minutes later I raised with AKo and Dario re-raised me...we ended up getting all in preflop again and he help QQ this time and he won again and this time it was for an 8k pot and I was eliminated. There was nothing I could have or would have done different in either spot and I don't think many other people would have either.

That is just the way it goes in tournaments. In the next tournament I play in hopefully I will have some better luck and these unavoidable situations will end up going my way, because when they don't there is little you can do to help your chances to succeed.

My next tourney may be tomorrow in the $1500 NL and if not then it will be the following day in the $2500 Half Pot Limit Hold'em and Half Pot Limit Omaha.

What downswing?

2009-05-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T19:57:00.001-07:00

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:

2009-05-07T16:37:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

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.

How to show tilt who is boss....

2009-04-29T04:40:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-04-26T06:49:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-04-23T16:28:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-04-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-04-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

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.

YES!! Random Act of Kindness: Part 2

2009-03-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

So on my day off from poker I decided to be a bit of a go-getter. The first thing I did when I woke bright and early (3:30 pm) was put a load of laundry in. Without missing a beat, I quickly changed out of my PJ's and into something that was presentable to wear in public and walked out the door. You see, if I had let any more time lapse before leaving the house I surely would have found something else to distract me from starting on my errands. Anyway, I decided I was going to get my haircut and I am proud to say this was the very first day that I started noticing it needed to be cut!

Finally, I convinced the lady that I didn't really care how she cut my hair and that I just wanted her to do what she thought would look best. While I was getting my haircut a young girl, her friend, and her grandma walked in and the girl was explaining to the lady at the check-in counter what she wanted done to her hair. "A little bit more blonde, just a little bit trimmed off, and some black highlight streaks." You could tell she was pretty pumped and proud of what she had decided to do with her hair. The girl working the counter turned around to ask the boss lady (who was cutting my hair) how much all of this would be. She said it would be right about $100 and the girl looked to her grandma with anticipation. Her grandma, very matter of fact, said "$100?! I don't think so!" She tried to not get too visibly upset, but you could tell she was crushed. I was eavesdropping on them negotiating on some prices for different stuff they could do with her hair that was cheaper than what she intended to get done, but it was time for me to go back for my shampoo and the "green tea facial treatment". I know it sounds super duper gay, but it is really awesome! Basically she puts a hot towel on my face and I sit there for a while and then she comes and massages my face with some tingly feeling stuff that is pretty cool. The haircut, shampoo, and facial is $18 total which feels like stealing to me.

I asked the boss lady that was washing my hair if the girl was going to be able to get her hair colored and she said that it was to expensive and she was just getting it a little more blonde and a trim. I told her that I wanted to pay for her to get whatever is was that she wanted done when she first walked in. She looked at me like I was a crazy person and tried for about 3 minutes to talk me out of doing it! Finally, I convinced her I was serious and she went to tell her the good news. Needless, to say the little girl was very happy and the boss lady was telling anyone that would listen that I was a poker star and an angel and blah blah blah. It was a super cool feeling. The lady ended up only charging me $50 for the girls stuff she got done. I gave a nice tip and headed to get my car washed. Two chores in one day!

Running super hot, monster noises, and a 24 hour lock-in

2009-03-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

It is kind of boring for me to write blogs that have only poker content in them, but that is pretty much all I have been doing lately and its all I have to write about at the moment. I had been struggling with motivation a bit in early March and I got somewhat sloppy with my play. Once I got back from my visit to Evansville I wrote down some goals for the upcoming 35 day stretch that I was going to be in Vegas without anything else on going on. Basically my main goal was to make $20,000 over that 35 day stretch and I wanted to do it with a mix of playing 2/4, 3/6, and 5/10 NL. I determined that I would need to play about 67,000 hands and run at my normal win rate in order to make that much money. To play that many hands in 35 days meant that I would have to average around 5 hours/day of 8 tables at a time. I kinda nixed the idea of playing very much 2/4, because it seems silly to me when I know I have an edge in the 5/10 games to play smaller limits. Anyway, I have been playing almost all 5/10 and mixing in some tables of 10/20 when the full ring games run. After my first 13 days I was up around 6-7,000 and I was pretty close to being on the pace I wanted to be. However, my 14th day I won almost 7,000 and my 15th day I won almost 8,000! It was a pretty awesome two days as it seemed like I just never lost any decent sized pots...and I didn't.

So, what changed? I definitely ran great when it came to being on the good side of the coolers, but I felt like I made some drastic improvements in my attitude and play. My friend, Jeremy and I had been discussing our river play quite a bit and I decided that I was really going to focus on being MUCH more aggressive on the river and winning more pots that I would normally just give up on. It is pretty amazing how successful this new style has been for for me. Sometimes you look really foolish when you get called and you have air, but people just fold so often on the river it more than makes up for it. It has also been pretty entertaining for me to play this style and having the mindset of being a RIVER MONSTER! I have been rewarding myself for successful aggressive river plays that I wouldn't normally make by growling very loudly (much like a real life river monster might) and making a clawing motion with my hand at my computer screen. I hope you all enjoy the mental picture that just gave you and I promise that I really have been doing that! RAAAWR!

Yesterday I ended up losing about $2,200 online and it was a bit of a set back after my two huge days online. I could feel myself losing my focus a little bit so I quit after only a couple of hours, because I didn't want my surging confidence to be rattled by a long poor session. I then decided to go play a live session and I ended up playing for almost 10 hours and booking a $3100 win so it wasn't such a bad day after all.

Speaking of long sessions...anyone reading this blog has been cordially invited to the first annual 24 hour lock-in taking place in the Bellagio Poker Room which starts on Friday, April 3rd at noon. Josh and I came up with the idea since neither one of us has never played a super long session like that. It should be interesting and hopefully some more people will join us.

I am taking tomorrow (today) off from poker because I have been playing way too much lately and I want to rest my mind for a day or two.

I am not a celebrity hound, but this was pretty cool.

2009-03-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

My friend, Patrick Kelley, and his wife, Katie, are in town and I was playing tour guide and and showing them around a bit on the strip. March Madness is going on so the sportsbooks are packed. Patrick wanted to make some bets for tomorrows games so we went in the Wynn sportsbook. I explained to him what all the numbers meant and how to makes the best that he wanted to make. There was a long line and Patrick and Katie went first to make their bets and then they waiting for me while I made mine. Once I was finished up I turned around to walk out with them and Katie nervously started whispering to me telling me to look over her shoulder. Much to my surprise was one of my childhood....heck one of my heros, Bobby Knight! Patrick went and shook his hand and we were about to leave until him and Billy Packer (an announcer for CBS basketball that I really detest) grabbed microphones and had a question and answer period for about 45 minutes. Some people got up from their front row seats just as they started talking so we ended up with great seats for what was a pretty cool impromptu Q & A with Bobby and Billy.

Here is a picture that turned out really crappy with my phone:

Moral of the story: Don't be a smart alleck...

2009-03-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

So about 4-5 months ago I went to get my oil changed and I drug along all three of my friends that were in town; Matt, Jason, and Brian. After about 20 minutes the technician came in to get me so that he could begin the hustle of showing me how my wipers, air filter, transmission fluid, washer fluid, and every other possible thing that can be changed for a small fee at a quickly lube type place was way over due and needed to be changed immediately if I cared at all about both my car and myself living a long life. This wasn't my first rodeo involving getting hustled by a quicky lube guy so as I followed him out of the waiting room I turned to my friends and said "here we go...". I didn't intend for the tech to hear me, but he clearly did and he said back to me rather confrontationall "What's that?" He caught me off guard and as badly as I wanted to I couldn't come up with any way to defend myself and I sheepishly replied with an honest answer "Um, I just said here we go". Since I had made it apparent that I thought he was about to try to hustle me he tried to extra convincing about how vital all of these changes and repairs were. Since the cat was already out of the bag that I wasn't buying any of this guy's nonsense I was rather short with him and just said that I didn't want any of his recommendations. Needless to say, this guy wasn't a fan of my negative attitude.

Fast forward to the next morning...my front right tire had a nail in it and was totally flat. Brian, Jason, and I changed the tire...it wouldn't normally take more than one person to change a tire, but these two were so hungover that together they totaled less than a full person. I made a joke about how the tech probably put a nail in my tire on purpose because I was a smart alleck when he was trying to "help" me.About a month after that another tire was low on air...no big deal I stopped at the gas station for a can of fix-a-flat and reapired the tire myself while Kevin and Josh sat in the car and laughed at me as I got it all over my hands. About another month after that when Clint and I were leaving the Wynn, my tire was totally flat and we had to get a cab home. That tire required two cans of fix-a-flat, but then when my car got up to 70 M.P.H. It began to shake.

Right now I am Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express being the go-getter that I vowed to be...getting my spare (with a nail in it) reapired and balancing the tire with the two cans of fix-a-flat in it. Don't worry, the tech found a nail in ANOTHER tire as well.

At first I was joking, but I am not so sure I don't really believe that the tech at the first quicky lube put a nail in all FOUR of my tires!

Moral of the blog: Don't be a smart alleck the technicians at quicky lubes...they can make your life pretty miserable. Then again, I probably just got unlucky with my flat tire luck. Apparently there is as much variance involved in flat tires as there is poker...who knew?

I wanna be a go getter....

2009-03-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

My good friend, Landon, was talking to me one day about what he thinks one of his greatest life skills is. He claims that what separates people from sucking and not sucking in life in general is the ability to learn to do new things that they want to accomplish and most importantly having the motivation to actually get started and follow through on them. He says that both him and his brother, Andy, are both great at doing this. It should come as no surprise that they are two of my most successful friends.

Landon claims that just about any task you are wanting to accomplish should begin with a google search on your desired topic and end with a "See, that wasn't so tough". It is very simple when you break it down like that. The hard part for most people lies in the motivation factor. The act of doing whatever you want to accomplish is usually very easy, but getting started can be quite the hurdle to overcome sometimes.

I have decided that the longer you put things off the chances of them not happening increase exponentially. For me the things I want to be more of a go getter on are always really simple things and each passing day that I don't take care of them makes them that much harder for me to do the following day. For example: If I don't pay the bills the first day I think about doing it I am much less likely to pay them the next day. If I don't cut my finger nails the first time I notice they need cut there is a pretty good chance they will get way longer than I like them...the same applies to shaving and getting my haircut. I mean sometimes I will plan on getting my haircut for 3 weeks before I actually get it cut and that is just ridiculous. Each day I don't write my blog it gets that much tougher to write a new entry. Each day I don't go to the gym, each day I don't eat healthy, each day I don't wash my car or buy the new windshield wipers it currently needs, each day I don't go to get the flat tire in my trunk repaired and my oil changed, each day I don't clean my fish tank....it get that much tougher to get started on. NONE of those things take more than an hour to do and I could probably get all of them done in less than 3 hours if I really hustled.

Today I vow to be more of a go getter and it started with my going to the gym today for the 3rd time in 5 days, eating healthy for the last week, writing my first blog entry in about a month in a half, and reviewing some of yesterdays hands before I begin today's session (I always say I am going to do that, but I NEVER do). I will get started on that other laundry list (speaking of laundry, that is probably the best example of this yet!).....tomorrow. See there I go again, already putting things off to another day! No, but seriously...I can only do so much in one day before I get my poker fix in.

Thanks for reading and I am sorry it took me song long to update.

Great success!

2009-02-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

I am pretty proud of my first day of the challenge. I took two of the worst beats possible and I still won $880 on the day. I am proud to say that $400 of those winnings came without a show down...woot! woot!. I don't usually talk about bad beats, but these two were pretty spectacular so I'll give you a brief summary:

I got it all in on the flop with 88 on a 8c 4x 2c board against a short stack that had the nut flush draw and another full stack that had a set of 4's. The set of 4's made quad 4's to win the $2400 pot.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3814216

I got it all-in on the flop for $1k each with AA vs. AKs on a As 8s 4x board. It came running spades and he scooped the $2k pot. I shouldn't have been surprised though, because my roommate Kevin was sweating that hand and giving me advice about how I should just call and check raise the flop and blah blah blah. Anyway, Josh and I can both confirm he is certainly a black cat when he is watching you play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3814204

I was about a 96% favorite in the second hand and 70% for the main pot and 95% side pot in the first hand.

Neither one of them really bothered me too badly. I get much more affected when I make poor plays that cost me money than I do when I take a bad beat. I played really well all day and I am happy that I managed to win today despite those two hands. Those two hands could have easily went my way in which case I would have won well over $5,000 on the day.

So far in my challenge I am almost exactly on pace. I played for 4.9 hours and 2463 hands. My red line is in the positive, but I am only running at 3.58bb/100 (winning either one of those hands would put me well above the 8 I am shooting for).

Quick poker experiment...

2009-02-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

I really want to raise my overall win rate (obviously), but I am going to spend the next 8 days focusing on maximizing my win rate instead of maximizing my potential money earned. Hopefully, my experiment will help me maximize my potential money earned in the future. I am going to limit myself to only playing 8 tables, because I think my overall quality of play suffers significantly when I play 10 and especially 12. I am also going to only play 2/4 NL for these next 8 days and I hope to play 20,000 hands during this stretch. A while ago I put some serious effort into increasing my money won without showdown and I think it had a pretty positive impact on my overall win rate. Since then I have sort of let that mind frame go by the wayside and I have started to suffer in money lost without a showdown. This is referred to as "the red line", because it shows up on graphs in red. My goal for these 20,000 hands is to actually show a profit with my red line. I think I can get my win rate up to 8bb/100 at 2/4 NL if I can make this improvement on my red line.

I haven't done a poker challenge like this in a while so it will be kinda fun to have something to shoot for instead of just playing to make the most money everyday.

Summary of Goals through February 11th (in order of importance):
1. Show a profit with my red line
2. Play 20,000 hands
3. Achieve a win rate higher than 8bb/100

Rules for Goals:
1. Play no more than 8 tables.
2. Play only 2/4 NL, (unless a huge fish is playing higher).

This is quite a bit of playing for me and probably will take about 40 hours in the next 8 days. A win rate of 8bb/100 should result in around $6,400.

I am going to hit the sack for now. I have a good feeling about my chances for success in this challenge and I think it will help my motivation having something to shoot for.

EDIT: When I woke up today I decided it was silly to drop down and play 2/4 NL instead of just doing the same experiment at 5/10. Since I am a winning player at 5/10 I will just do the same experiment here and hopefully win double (or more) the amount of money.

Going, Going....Back to Back....

2009-01-30T03:04:00.000-08:00

It is possible I have won more in back to back days that I played, but I think this is a new record for me. Yesterday I won $7,746 and today I won $7,558 for a whopping two day total of $15,304!

Today I only played about 3 hours, but I did play almost all 5/10 and probably averaged 9 tables at a time. Basically, I only lost one big pot all day and I managed to win the rest of the big pots I played. The big pot that I lost was on the only 3/6 table I played today and it was a hand I decided to play tricky by just smooth calling a player's 3bet with AA. He flopped a set of Jacks and stacked me, but it probably would have turned out the same no matter how I played it. I was on the good end of one really sick cold deck today at that same 3/6 table. Here is the hand so you can see for yourself:http://www.pokerhand.org/?3787492

I also played one of the biggest pots I have ever played in a 5/10 game online. The other player played this hand very strange and tried to make a hero call of my overbet on the river....oops! http://www.pokerhand.org/?3787532

So Hold'em Manager gives a statistic on adjusted EV (expected value) that is supposed to show you how well you are running, but it only takes all-in situations into consideration when determining how well you are running. It really messes with my confidence when my Hold'em Manager tells me I have run ahead of expectation, but there is just so much that it can't take into consideration that I really shouldn't let it affect me the way it does. For example: Today I obviously ran SUPER hot to win as much as I did, but according to Hold'em Manager I ran below expectation by about $500. There are other days when I know I ran like crap and everything bad that could have possibly happened to me did and hold'em manager tells me that I ran $2,000 above expectation.

I just read a pretty cool blog written by another poker player explaining how he feels about running good or bad and he explains that you should only be concerned about things you can control when thinking about poker results and EV. The three things he says you can control are:

* You playing with your game selection standards
* You playing in whatever state of mind you’re in
* You playing when and however long you play

If you want to read his blog for yourself it is pretty in depth and very poker jargon filled, but it is located here: http://blogs.cardrunners.com/internetpokers/poker-is-a-whore-1232943829

I guess it is time to go wedding dress shopping.....

2009-01-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

I always complain about always being the bridesmaid and never the bride, but not this time! So it wasn't the biggest field or the highest buy-in that I have ever played, but I did at least get my first ever online tournament victory. The have this Big Daily Double thing every night on full tilt where they charge a little extra juice and reward you for doing well in both tournaments combined. I played in both of these tournaments and I happened to not only cash in both of them, but also made the final table in both of them. For everyone that cashes in both tournaments they give out 3% of the jackpot that has been accumulated for them to share. The person with the highest average finish gets 2% of the jackpot amount. Also, anyone that makes both final tables gets to share 20% of the total jackpot. If you happen to win both tournaments you get 75% of the jackpot! I double cashed (along with 3 other people), had the highest average finish, and made both final tables (I was the only one) so I ended up getting 22.75% of the $18,709 jackpot for a total of $4,228 on top of my tournament cashes of around $3,200. The best news of the day was that I thought I was probably down around $2-3,000 playing cash games for the day, but I ended up winning $313 somehow. So I ended up having almost an $8,000 day seemingly by accident (since I hardly ever play tournaments and am not really sure why I decided to sign up for those two)!

Having such a good day was very welcome after having a poor showing during my trip to LA. I ended up losing about $4,000 after expenses, but it could have been much worse...and much better.

I played one of the most interesting hands I have ever played live while I was there. I'll try to keep it short. The game was 10/20 NL and the first player raised it to $60 and 6 people called including my self with pocket 7's from middle position. The flop was 7s 4d 3s and the original raiser checked. The player to his left went all-in for $360, I called and so did the player behind me. The original raiser now announced that he was all-in! He had about $4,500 more in front of him and now the action was on me. First of all, it is tough for me to put him on 65 since he raised under the gun. Second, him making such a huge over bet in this spot seemed very strange and it could mean any number of things. He could be going crazy with a big pocket pair (most likely AA if he is an idiot and panicked), overcards and a flush draw like AsKs, an underset of 4's or 3's, and occasionally the nut straight with 56. Without giving it too much thought I just decided there was no way I could fold top set here and I said I call and he instantly looked sick. The guy behind me thought for a bit and folded and now the guy that I had just called asked me if I wanted to make a deal such as running it twice or some other deal we came up with. The dealer announced that we could not run it twice and no deals were allowed. The other player made the dealer hold off dealing the turn and river while we discussed this further. He asked me what I had and I told him I had a set, to which he responded by asking me if I wanted to "just save the additional money (the $4500) and play for what was in the pot?" Of course I said I did not want to save the $4500, because I was now certain that I had the best hand. After I told him this he announced to me that he had the nuts and asked me again if I wanted to save the extra $4500 and play for what was in the pot. I immediately said "Yes!" and he agreed that is what we would do. The dealer was fine with this and dealt the turn and the river which were both blanks and he tabled 56 for the nut straight and drug the pot. Shew! This guy was so worried about how poorly he had been running lately and how he "just knew" he was going to lose the pot as soon as I called that he gave (rather saved) me a gift in the form of $4,500 in cash! Yes, I could have sucked out and won the pot, but he is a huge favorite in the hand and what is the purpose of playing in the hand if you don't want to get all of your money in with that situation. Oh well, I am glad he was playing on scared money (in the most literal sense I have ever seen). So that is how LA could have been worse....

It could have been better had I not gotten rather unlucky in some other rather large pots. The one that left the most bitter taste in my mouth was basically the last hand that I played. I played the tournament the first day I got there and didn't cash so I was immediately in the hole and fought the whole time to get out of it. I only won one day I was there, but it wasn't enough to get me back to even. I was determined on the last night we were there to get winner on the trip even if it meant I would have to play a long session (I wouldn't really play super long to just chase getting even, but it was a good mindset to have I think). Anyway, I was stuck about $2,000 for the trip and I was finally starting to play good and I had a fantastic table image. I knew if I could just make a hand I would always be able to get paid off. About 5 hours into my session (about the time I usually quit) the guy on my right raised it to $80, I reraised to $220 with AsAc, he reraised me to $700, and I put him all-in for $1710, and he very quickly called me. This is a pretty standard spot to get in when someone has Aces and someone has Kings so I just assumed that was the situation here. We didn't turn our hands over and the flop was 3 small cards that were all clubs, the turn was an off-suit king), and the river was the 8s. Even though I thought there was a pretty good chance that the king on the turn beat me I was still pretty sick when he turned over KcQc! He put $1710 in preflop with KcQc and just flopped a flush like he was supposed to. Oh well, that was about all I could handle for the trip and I left a few hands later accepting defeat on my trip to LA. Had I won that pot I would have been very close to being even on the trip, but sometimes it just doesn't work out like that.

The action was absolutely fantastic in LA and I need to make more frequent trips there, but I just really hate the drive over there.

Cliffnotes: I did poorly in LA, but I more than made up for it by running good and winning my first ever online tournament.

update

2009-01-26T16:16:00.000-08:00

Both of my blog readers have mentioned that I haven't updated my blog lately so I thought I would mention why. Matt and I have been in LA for the last week playing poker during the LAPC. I haven't hardly been on the internet at all, because it is $10/day at our hotel room and it kind of feels nice to get a break from it anyway. I have some interesting stuff to talk about from our trip, but I am typing this on my phone so I'll wait to post about it until I get back home. We are driving back on Tuesday before our basketball game.

I finally had my first good day of 2009

2009-01-15T20:45:00.000-08:00

I am pretty proud of myself for it too. I had been playing too many tables (12 most of the time), and it was effecting my play all around. It seemed like I was stacking off lite left and right without even giving it a second thought. I would get to the end of a session and check to see how much I had won or lost and it was ALWAYS lower than I expected. Basically, I was just getting too careless. I was letting myself play poorly and not even caring, because I had so many tables going. It always sucks when you have to cut back the amount of tables that you play, because it feels much slower and seems like you won't ever make money anywhere close to as fast as you lost it. It seems like it really affects my confidence when I end up winning less or losing more than I expected in a session (I have still been waiting to look to see if I won or lost until the end of my sessions).

Anyway, today I cut back to 8 tables and tried to focus more on each table. I started the day off by losing the biggest hand I lost all day in a rather ridiculous way. I got all-in on the flop for $1200 with Qh Qd on a 8h 9s 6s board. I didn't feel great about getting it in there, but we put in $450 preflop and I wasn't going to fold now. I was relieved when he flipped over the other two queens...until it went running spades and he scooped the $2400 pot. I was really proud of the way I handled it though since I had been battling some slight tilt issues and not playing my best the past few days. I took some deep breathes and stared at the ceiling for 10 seconds or so, got up and ran to the fridge to get a drink, and returned perfectly calm as if nothing had happened.

So, even though I started the day down about $1800 within the first 500 hands or so I made a roaring comeback and ended up winning just over $5500. I needed to have a day like that. I am now officially in the positive for 2009. Hopefully, I won't look back from here on out!

Welcome to the Breakfast Club....

2009-01-12T16:21:00.000-08:00

I decided to finally give my readers what they have been demanding for a very long time. A picture recap of my breakfast for the last 7 days.

Tuesday:
Cinnamon Life cereal topped with sliced bananas and skim milk.

Wednesday:
Scrambled Eggs with Cheese and Cream Cheese (I had to settle for colby jack cheese and fat free cream cheese though because that's all we had) and two slices of white toast with fat free butter spray (thanks Landon).

Thursday:
Cinnamon Rolls and a glass of skim milk. I was trying to eat somewhat healthy, but I realized I was going to run out of healthy things to eat if I was going to have something unique for 7 days in a row. Plus, I already had the cinnamon rolls and they have to get eaten at some point.

Friday:
Three packets of peaches and cream oatmeal (it started as only two packets, but I didn't measure the milk and I put too much in so I improvised and added another packet to make it the correct consistency) and two pop tarts (cooked a little too long for my taste).

Saturday:
Two egg and cheese sandwiches on toast (I once again had to settle for colby jack cheese and that doesn't go very well on egg sandwiches, just so ya know).

Sunday:
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with extra crunchy peanut butter and strawberry jam and blueberry waffles used as the bread...a fantastic touch if you have never tried it (and I don't know of anyone else in the world weird enough to have tried it). Also, a glass of chocolate milk.

Monday:
Apple slices with extra crunchy peanut butter.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to the breakfast club.

Scammed by bum....

2009-01-08T03:55:00.000-08:00

Josh and I were on our way home at 4am coming from a 4 hour marathon session of 4/8 mixed game at the Rio and I had to stop and get gas. Some black bum came walking around from the back of the gas station and started in on me...His story was he that he was new in town and just moved here from St. Louis 2 weeks ago and had a job at the Palms as a cook in the Buffet. Apparently his car had run out of gas and he had left it parked for two days at the Auto Zone across the street and someone had stolen the battery out of his car. However, they had a used battery to sell him at Auto Zone and it only cost $10. I said "So what you are telling me is you need me to give you $10." He said "Well....could you do $20? I am gonna need to get gas too." He even said he would pay me back the $20 if I would just drop by the buffet at the palms with my girl and even Josh if I wanted to bring him along. All I had to do was tell the people at the buffet that the "Black Guy" sent me and they would know who I was talking about and let me in. I can't imagine a way that this could go wrong! I told him I would see if I had $10, of course I only had a $20 so I just gave it to him and told him to get some gas too. Obviously, I didn't believe his story in the first place, but I didn't really care. He clearly needs the $20 more than I do so I gave it to him.

As soon as we got in the car Josh told me that guy had told him the same exact story 6 months ago. Man, that guy sure is unlucky...twice he has had his battery stolen out of his car, but thankfully Auto Zone has had used batteries on sale for $10 each time (as if Auto Zone even keeps used batteries on hand to sell). Not to mention...that guy sure moves alot. I mean just 6 months ago he had only been in Vegas for 2 weeks and as of today he had just moved here only 2 weeks ago. That means he had to move here, move away, and move back all in 6 months time...it must be work related or something I guess.

Two blogs in one....

2009-01-04T05:43:00.000-08:00

1st Blog:

Goals: 2009

I predict that 2009 will be the most productive year of my fairly young poker career. That is saying quite a bit considering the year I had in 2008. I am not even sure how much money I won in 2008, because I did not keep as accurate records as I used to in the past or as I plan on doing in the future. I know how much I won online in Hold’em cash games on full tilt and poker stars and I can also get a fairly accurate estimate of my online tournament win and/or losses. However, I have almost no idea how I did in live poker for the year in cash games and/or tournaments. I know I was profitable in live cash games and I am sure I lost money in live tournaments, but to what degree I can’t be certain of either one. In 2009 I will keep an excel spreadsheet with all of my live wins and losses documented. I am also going to attempt to keep an accurate record of all of my spending using excel as well.

These are my goals for 2009 in order of importance.

1. Improve my poker game on a daily basis as much as possible.
2. Buy a house.
3. Play 1300 hours of online cash games and log 600,000 hands.
a. This equates to playing about 31 hours per week for 42 weeks per year and averaging around 6 tables at a time.
b. At my current lifetime win rate of around $118/hour I would make around $150,000 and I think I can realistically expect to make over $220,000 at the limits I plan on playing (3/6 and higher) with the potential to make $300k+
4. Weigh 200 pounds or less by 2010, I am currently around 225 pounds after an astronomical surge in weight gain caused by my week in Cabo.
5. Save a minimum of $10,000 in some form for retirement and $15,000 in other general investments.
6. Prepare to buy a second house sometime in 2010.
7. Get married and have kids….GOTCHA!

I can’t think of any other specific goals at this point, but I know there are more things that I want to accomplish. I will hopefully add to these sometime before I post this blog around the first of the year.

Sigh...just for kicks I went back and looked to see if I had a blog with resolutions for a 2008. I did and guess what they were? To keep better records and buy a house....I suck. Hopefully this year I will do it, but my track record doesn't speak highly of itself. One thing I did do was maintain this blog and there is something to be said for that.
2nd Blog:

You say you want a revolution?

It is something very simple, but it really bugs me. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people fail to take into account an entire group of people’s feelings when making personal decisions. For example, one of the things that has consistently made me more upset than just about anything else I can think of is when “teammates” decide to not show up for a rec sports league game. I can’t tell you how furious it has made me in the past to show up to rec basketball games and without warning we end up having to play the game with 5 players or even worse…with 4 players. Hopefully, these people don’t think it about the consequences of their choice and just say to themselves “Well, it isn’t a big deal to me if I don’t play tonight and surely the rest of them team won’t be upset if I cause us to lose by not showing up”. It just seems so inconsiderate to the point that it is unfathomable to me to all but force your other teammates into a loss by not showing up or warning them you aren’t coming. Anyway, my newest complaint has nothing to do with rec sports leagues, but is more about failing to take other people into consideration when making a personal decision.

When you are the first person in line when you are using an escalator or one of the flat versions referred to as “people movers” you should realize that your decision DOES affect everyone behind you. If you decide to stand and not actively walk up an escalator when you are first in line you have affectively made the choice for everyone behind you that being lazy and standing is the preferred method to use the escalator. Sure, someone that wants to walk up the escalator has the option to be the jerk that excuses himself as he bumps into everyone as he passes the people who decide to stand, but nobody wants to be that guy. So my solution is simple: If there are people behind you on an escalator either actively walk up or down the escalator or clearly move to the side so they can pass with ease.

Personally, I like to walk up them and it really bugs me when someone else decides that I would rather be lazy and ride up them at the snail’s pace that they go by standing obliviously in the middle of the staircase. Clearly someone else has thought of this, because some people movers have painted instructions on the floor telling you which side to stand or walk in. Some of them even have audio warnings telling you to let walkers pass if you decide to stand. Despite these instructions, people still decide all the time that the people behind them would rather stand instead of walk when they choose to stand in the middle of the lane or side-by-side with their partner as they take up both the standing and walking lanes.

Moral of the blog: Think about how your decisions affect other people. Also, GET OUT OF THE WAY YOU LAZY INCONSIDERATE JERK!

End of rant.

Live poker is personal.....

2008-12-13T19:09:00.001-08:00

It takes a lot more courage to play live poker than it does to play online for sure. When I play online I can three bet someone with air without batting an eye, I can be stuck $4,000 and not be phased in the least, or I can misplay a hand and immediately shake it off. None of this is easy when playing live poker. Last night I played a hand so miserably I don't even want to discuss it. I'll just say some maniac flopped a set on me and before I knew what happened I had lost everything I had in front of me (about $4600) and I was on my way home. It is WAY more disheartening to lose playing live than it is online, because you have to deal with embarrassment, having a losing image at the table, and trying to recoup your loses at a painfully slow pace (compared to online). I decided that I would try to slow down a bit and maybe only play half a day of poker and just try to book a win today. I played about 1,000 hands online and luckily got a seat in a game where a really bad player was playing 10/20 NL (6 max game). I ended up winning around $2,000 today so that took away a little bit of the sting of the $4,200 I lost playing live last night. So, I have had quite a few days recently where I won $5k+ and even some right around $10k, but losing $4k live feels way worse than those winning days felt good. Oh well, that's just the way it goes sometimes.

My buddy Justin and his girlfriend, Niki, have had a trip planned to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for a few months now. They half jokingly invited me to go with them a while ago and I surprised them by booking my trip last week when the trip was only 2 weeks away. Molly and I are leaving Vegas on the 17th and getting to Cabo around noon and we'll be back in Vegas on the 22nd. I just booked my flight home for Christmas today and I won't be home until 10pm on the 23rd, but I am staying until January 2nd so I can attend Justin's New Years bash he has planned. I will try and post some pictures on here from our trip. At least this time I can be sure I will have some pictures to post, because I am sure the girls will take plenty.

In case anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas I want the same thing I asked for last year....if you plan on giving me anything I prefer you either save your money and buy yourself something and/or donate whatever you planned on spending on me to the charity of your choice. The thought of donating stuff got me thinking about something I have always wanted to do....

I always had heard about "The David Letterman Scholarship", but all I really knew about it was that your GPA had nothing to do with it. I just looked it up and "The goal of the scholarshp (haha, brilliant! I just copied and pasted this from the site and the little red line popped up, letting me know that the word "scholarship" was misspelled...so I will leave it like that for you to see the irony of this scholarship) is assist average students who have a creative mind. Winners are selected primarily based on creativity."

I originally thought the scholarship was a little less structured that that, but it still gave me my idea. I never had a shot to win a scholarship of any kind, but then again, why would I? After all, I was a horrible student (Slightly above a 2.0 GPA), I didn't excel in any sports, I was from a wealthy family, I am white, and the most obvious reason....I never even considered applying for one. However, I want to pass on my legacy to some other under achieving, upper class, slacker of a kid. If for no other reason than for the comedic value that will it will bring to an otherwise VERY boring class day. I mean can you imagine when the undeserving class clown gets to walk on stage, shake the principal's hand, and accept his $500 or $1,000 scholarship? I am going to talk to one of my friends that teaches at Central High School and see what I have to do to get this scholarship implemented for this year's Class Day.

Here are the requirements:
-Must have less than a 3.0 GPA.
-Must come from an middle/upper class family.
-Must be attending Indiana Univeristy.
-Must have played at least one varsity sport his/her (can't imagine it ever going to a girl) senior year.
-Must have one letter of reference from a teacher stating his/her level of under-achievement.
-Comedic value of application will be taken into consideration.

It will most likely be a cash scholarship of $500 or $1,000 value.

Can you think of any other guidelines that should be considered for my scholarship?

A good day, but some weird hands....

2008-12-11T03:20:00.001-08:00

I played a little under 5 hours online and won $4181 and then I went to the Bellagio to play 10/20 I ended up playing there for about 5 hours as well. I won just under $800 there. The games have been pretty bad in general during the tournaments that have been running. It seems like everyone playing in the games plays for a living and there are no soft spots at all. People are 3betting constantly which is so atypical of a normal live passive type of game. Basically, it is just a bunch of internet wiz kids all playing against each other.

Anyway, I want to talk about a couple of hands I played. One of them just because it was unique and one because I want to see if I made a mistake or a correct call.

The first hand an early position player made raised it to $80, one other player called, and I called with 45 of diamonds. The flop was Ad Jh 8c and everyone checked. The turn was the 3d. So now I had a flush draw and a gutshot straight draw. The original raiser checked and the other player bet $180, I called, the other player folded. The river was an offsuit Ten and he checked to me. I contemplated bluffing the river for a moment and then decided I would just give up on the hand, because it felt like he was trying to induce a bluff from me anyway. I checked and he said "you win" and folded his hand towards the dealer and I instantly said "No, you win", but held onto my cards. The dealer quickly grabbed his cards and jammed them into the muck and I kind of just sat there as the dealer started pushing me the pot. I took the pot and as I was handing my cards to the dealer the other player realized what I said and said something like "What? How High?". I told him I had 5 high and and he just smiled and said "Wow!". He clearly folded the winner and I felt kind of bad for taking a pot that I shouldn't have one, but that is how the rules in poker work. Anyway, I won a $630 pot that I shouldn't have and I offered to give him a $60 rebate, because I felt bad. He seemed to think that was a reasonable offer by me and he took the money and that was that.

The next hand, I raised it to $80 from utg with AK of spades, the aggressive Canadian to my left said "I have to raise here" and he raised it to $340 total, and a guy in late position just smooth called the $340. I had a very tight image (obviously) and I decided that I could make both of them fold hands like other AKs or maybe even QQ and I raised it to $1180 total and I had about $3400 more left. The Canadian folded in disgust and the other kid thought for a while before he put me all-in. I didn't like it one bit, but I really didn't feel like he had smooth called with AA or KK although it was very possible he held one of those hands. Anyway, I did some math in my head and estimated there was about $6,000 in the pot and I had to call $3400 more. I thought for a couple of minutes and eventually the Canadian called the clock on me. I ended up calling and he had the AK of clubs...SHEW! They let us chop the pot and we split the Jerky Canadian's money. I ran some math when I got home and if his range was AA, KK, QQ, AKs, and AKos I was profiting about $600 by making the call and if he could only have AA, KK, AK or AKs there I was making about $440 by calling. If he had only KK or AA I was losing about $1200 by calling. Basically, there was just too much money in the pot to fold and I ended up making the correct call, but it wasn't very much fun doing so!

Time to hit the sack...I have an 11am tee time tomorrow (today really, because it is 3:52 am).

Night. Night.

New Record =)

2008-12-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

I broke my personal best daily winning record today. I won $4747 online and then went to the Bellagio and pretty much didn't lose any pots and ended up winning another $6831 there. That makes my new record for most money won in a single day $11,578. That is a pretty sweet feeling to win so much in a day, but honestly it doesn't feel like anything out of the ordinary happened. I had to make one tough call (I was right) at the Bellagio and I ran a little above expectation online. Its not like $11K is just another day at the office, but its not like I get the chills thinking about it or it is an amount that is going to change my life. When I won 74K in the tournament that was a very surreal feeling and I was on cloud nine for a few months, to the point where it negatively affected my poker game. I think it probably affected me differently to win so much in a tourney, because I almost felt undeserving of winning so much by risking so little and it was also very unexpected. When you win money in a cash game you have to risk all the money that you end up winning so you feel a little more entitled to it. Also, there is more of a realistic expectation as to how much you could possibly win.

I have been reading a book that was suggested to me by Nick and I find it really entertaining and insightful. The book is "Fooled by Randomness" and it basically just makes you aware of how much stuff that happens in life is a result of chance/variance rather than skill or hard work. I will have more to blog about this book when I am finished reading it, but it hard to re-explain the stuff that he talks about because he writes in a very concise style that isn't easily summarized.

Oh, I almost forgot! Tonight in my 10/20 NL game an attractive extremely drunk woman sat down to play with us. You could tell she definitely had a lot of money somehow and that she clearly didn't belong in this poker game. She then told us her husband was a baseball player so I asked what his name was...Kris Benson. I recognized his name and remembered him pitching for the Pirates and I think it was when he was a rookie. When she said Kris was her husband something was triggered in my memory and I recalled there being some kind of tabloid type publicity involving those two. Of course I immediately google'd "Kris Benson's wife" on my phone and before it had even finished I knew her name was Anna Benson. Anyway, when I got the results and clicked on the first link it told their story and also included some photos of her. There were some quotes of her saying stuff like "I told Kris that if he ever cheated on my I would sleep with the entire Mets organization (his team at the time)". The article also talked about how they got caught having sex in the parking lot in Kris's Tahoe and she talked about all the different baseball stadiums they'd had sex in. She was awful at poker, but somehow only ended up losing about $100 of the $1,000 that she had bought in for. She told us how she had sprained her ankle and broken her toe when she fell as she was running up the stairs, because she was in a hurry to get to Vegas to party. Anyway, she quit playing because her toe started hurting her and she didn't think she was going to be able to make it to her room. She wanted someone to push her in one of the chairs from the poker room all the way to her room, but she would not except the floorman's offer of providing a wheelchair for her. She ONLY wanted to get pushed in one of the chairs from the poker room. Long story short, she asked me if I would help walk her to her room and I obliged. On the way to her room she tried to steal one of those hover-a-round scooters that some handicapped person had left outside of the poker room. When we got to the elevators she obviously didn't have her room key or her any ID so they wouldn't let her up to the room. She first tried to call her husband on the hotel phone and dialed the wrong room and woke someone else up at 3:00am. Finally, she called Kris on his cell phone and I left her at the elevators waiting for Kris to come down and let her up. Just another normal night in Vegas!

Here she is in all her glory:

Random act of kindness....

2008-12-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

It is one of my favorite things to do and for whatever reason it had been a while since I had done it, but I love paying for the person's order that is behind me in line in the drive thru at a fast food restaurant. I had to be awake again today at 8am to let the workers in to continue the repairs on our ceiling that was recently damaged when our roof leaked. Anyway, I woke up early and went to McDonalds to get some breakfast and I decided to pay for the person behind me today. It is so awesome seeing their reaction when they go to hand their money to worker and they tell them that it has already been taken care of by the car in front of them. They always looked so confused at first and then you can tell that you just made their day a little better. Today she looked up at me with a big smile and I gave her a wave just kinda saying "you're welcome". She then waved back and mouthed "Why?" and I have her a shrug as if to say back to her...."Why not?". She didn't stop smiling the whole time I was waiting to get my food...it is always much more fun to do when you can tell they are really appreciative and she clearly was. So, for $4.60 I estimate that I made her day and my day like $200 more valuable. That is a pretty sweet investment....$4.60 turned into $400 (2 x $200) worth of enjoyment. I recommend that you do the same the next time you are given the opportunity.

24 hours in the life of Pat....

2008-12-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up for the day at 11pm
11:30-12:00 - Went to Del Taco for "breakfast".
12:00-7:00am - played 4,261 hands of online poker and won $3,649
7:30-9:00am - Went to the Maple Tree with Nick and Channing for breakfast (my lunch).
10:00-5:30pm - Played 27 holes of golf and ate lunch (my dinner) at TPC with Jimmy and two of his buddies from Wisconsin and won $41 (-$76 in greens fees).
7:00-9:00pm - Played two hours of trampoline dodgeball and won $120 (-$12 in playing fees).
9:30-10:30 - Browsed the internet and wrote this blog.
11:00pm - Bedtime.

I wonder if I will ever grow up? I sure hope not!

Swingy swings....

2008-11-25T07:25:00.000-08:00

Well, apparently my idea that I wrote about in my last blog isn't as popular with my readers as I thought it would be. I have personally discussed my idea with every single one of my readers either in person, via instant mesenger, or email. That's right....I talked to all 6 of them and only one person agreed with me. Dad thinks public humiliation shouldn't be an option for punishment, Matt says that is a TERRIBLE IDEA, Nick agrees with me, Kevin (not a reader, but we discussed it) says no way (I wonder why?), but he does think that people who fail a driving test (me) should have to use special plates, and Josh says he likes the idea, but the plates shouldn't be permanent.

I think I probably agree with Josh the most of all those people. It would be a little bit ridiculous for someone who had a DUI when they were 21 to still be using special plates when they were dropping their kid off at school when they are in their 40's (assuming they have a clean record since their 1st DUI). So I want to revise my idea a little bit. If you are a repeat offender you get the plates for life....tough tittie said the kitty. First time offenders should have the plates and license for 3 years. If you still disagree with my idea then I hope all your loved ones are killed by a repeat drunk driver (that has the same plates he had the first time he got caught) this holiday season. Ok, I don't really hope that, because some of you that disagree with me consider me one of your loved ones and I don't want to die anytime soon.

Onto poker, The last 7 days of poker have been some of the swingiest days of poker I have ever played. I have either won or lost a minimum of $2100 each of the last 7 days. I ended up down $1915 during those 7 days, but I also ran over $5,000 below expectation during that span. I played over 40 hours online and over 16,000 hands during this time so I should be getting some pretty healthy rakeback for my hard work (probably around $6-700). I sure ended awfully badly by losing about $8,000 in the last two days alone. In fact I had probably the nastiest short term downswing I have ever had in the last two days. I lost almost $12,000 in about 1400 hands. That is impressively horrible and I am really glad I had been on such a nice run prior to the last two days. My last 25,000 hands of poker online have been break even, but it felt like anything but a break even period. There were lots of highs and lows in there, but it is what it is and I can't do anything about it now. I have made lots of improvements in my game and preparation lately and I am going to have much better results in the future from it.

I have lots of crap I have to get done before I leave for home today and there is not one of those things that I want to do....I can't wait!

I just thought of a fantastic idea....

2008-11-24T10:40:00.001-08:00

From time to time I will come up with a great idea for an invention or a cool way that something should be done. I almost never do anything about them, but it is still fun to think about them. I have even been disappointed before when I found out that someone else started producing one of my "inventions" before I got around to it....not that I was ever going to get around to it. This time though, I don't care if someone steals my idea...in fact, I hope they do!

I have no idea what made me think of this, but here goes anyway:

I think that anytime someone gets convicted of a DUI they should be given the normal punishments associated with a DUI, but in addition they should also be forever required to use specially marked license plates and driver's license that say "I am a convicted drunk driver". I think it should be very noticeable as well, perhaps an all red license plate or something to that affect. I think it would be a very strong deterrent towards drinking and driving. Here are some of the ways I think it would improve the current drinking and driving situation:

1. Police would be much more likely to pull someone over with specially marked plates so former offenders will be apprehensive to drive drunk again with the increased risk of being caught.
2. It would be pretty embarrassing to have to show a DUI branded drivers license anytime you needed to prove your identity and no one would want the gaudy looking bright red plate on their car either.
3. Other driver's on the road would be made more aware of potential drunk drivers.

Can you think of one good reason this shouldn't be a policy? Me either!

Wow, Wow, Wow.....

2008-11-23T06:45:00.000-08:00

I put in some serious hours of poker in the last 48 hours. I spent almost 18 of those hours playing online poker and I played over 7200 hands. I don't know what has gotten into me lately, but I have been extra motivated to put in lots of hours playing. Since November 6th, which is the last time I had people visiting I have played over 83 hours of online poker and 30,000 hands. That is averaging over 4.5 hours per day for 18 days. I have also played probably 25-30 hours of live poker during that stretch. I have been reading some of Leatherass' (he is an amazingly dedicated online grinder) blogs recently and I think he is part of the reason for the extra motivation. He just recently topped the $1,000,000 mark for the year. There are many people that make over a million dollars a year playing poker (I am guessing around 200+ in the world maybe?), but the crazy thing about Leatherass is that he does it playing very similar sized stakes to what I play. He also plays about 1.5 million hands in a year and I will probably end up somewhere just under 400,000 hands played for the year. It is really kind of exciting to see names of some of the regulars that I play with everyday cracking the list of the top 50 biggest winners for the year on Full Tilt. It is pretty crazy how much money can be won just at the stakes I have been playing if you are willing to put in the hours. I will be setting some very lofty goals at the start of 2009, that is for sure.

Anyway, my last 48 hours of online poker have been a roller coaster. I started off quickly up over $3,000 than I was down almost $4,000 and back to up $600 all in the first 4,000 hands I had played. I got all the way back down over $4,000 and then within the last 900 hands or so I went on a rush and won about $6,300 straight to finish up somewhere around $2,100. That last rush is what I want to talk about....I had just gotten back from eating with Nick at about 4:00am and decided just to play for a little bit before I went to bed. There is this guy that plays on stars whose playing style REALLY got under my skin and I decided I would fiddle around trying out his playing style to see how it worked. His style is very unique and I found out by playing it for a couple of hours that it is VERY hard to exploit. Anytime he enters a pot he min-raises and is constantly continuation betting the flop for about half-pot. I just found out that it really tilts other players (just like it did to me) to have someone constantly min-raising in their game. It really changes up the flow of the game that they are used to and they fail miserably at adjusting to it. I always found myself trying to make plays at this guy because it seems so weak when he min-raises all the time and these players can't help themselves from doing the same thing to me. It makes the effective stacks at the table play much deeper and gives you more opportunities to make decisions on later streets. They continually try to 3 bet me, but it costs me so little to call their 3bet since my initial raise was so small that it is worth it regardless of my cards most of the time. Everyone plays pretty similar preflop styles and everyone is pretty technically sound as far as preflop play goes. However, people get really lost in the hand when there is so much play after the flop and I love it. It is a really fun style to play and drives the other players bonkers. I am going to continue working on it tomorrow and see if my success rate stays the same....or even improves!

I gotta get to bed. Its about 7:30am and I plan on playing in the Sunday Million tournament on stars that starts at 1:30pm.

In case anyone reading this is wondering...I get into Evansville around 10pm on Tuesday night. See ya soon.

Advancing my game....

2008-11-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

I feel like I work pretty hard on improving my poker game and it is really rewarding when you can tell it is working. The most obvious way you can tell that you are improving is by the amount of money you win (or don't loss for some people). To me it is much more rewarding when my hard work pays off by giving me a clearer understanding of the game of poker in general or when I learn something about myself that helps to improve my poker game.

I was perusing the 2+2 forum yesterday after I had one of my worst losing days online ever. I lost over $5,000 yesterday and I just didn't feel like my normal self when I was playing. I made some errors that I would normally never make and I let one hand early in my session affect my emotions the rest of the day. Anyway, I found a gem of a post by a pretty respected poster on there and I think it is really going to be helpful. He gave some rather non poker related explanations as to why he thought he was able to achieve a higher win rate than most regulars his advice really hit home with me. He claims that in order to win at the rates he wins at you don't have to be more skilled than any of the other typical regular players, but you have to have more self control and better awareness of what is going on while you are playing. I have always thought that most people with decent intelligence and a fundamental understanding of poker should be able to make a living playing poker. There are many factors outside of poker skills that determine what makes you a winning player in the long run and those are the ones that most people fail at. He happens to agree with me, but explains it in a much better way than I could myself.

I am going to copy some excerpts from his post and comment on how I think they apply to me. I am sure this will be pretty boring to the people reading this that aren't interested in improving their poker game, but for those of you that are you should pay attention to what he has to say....its some pretty good stuff.

#1 BW: Your mental, emotional state while playing is 80% of the work, and you can work and take specific steps to get better at that. Being in the right emotional state will allow you to open up your eyes to what you and the other players are doing without being stuck in the previous hand you lost, how much you are up, what you´re gonna eat later, etc.

Combine that with some basic technical steps that can be taken and you got the other 20% to at least achieve enough to live comfortably off poker. I believe that with today’s games and climate, anybody with even mediocre intelligence and some discipline could at the very least make a comfortable living playing this game.

I feel like I have better control of my mental state while playing that most players, but this is an area where I can definitely improve on. I know I have said this before, but no more chatting while I am playing and I am going to work on clearing my mind of outside stuff while I am playing. There is jut no excuse to not make an effort to focus 100% of your energy on poker while you are playing. I realize it is difficult to actually give 100% of your focus, but you should at least try to do so.

#2 The big difference between the average 1-2 grinder and the average 3/6 or 5/10 grinder is definitely not raw talent or God-given natural abilities. It is risk tolerance, bankroll management, game selection, tilt control. All very simple things to reign in with a little emotional control.

These are almost the exact same things I have been working on lately without even really knowing I was working on them. My bankroll management has never been an issue. However, I was always complaining how I wasn't comfortable in bigger games and I felt like my hands were face up when I played them. Forcing myself to play in bigger games has somewhat solved my risk tolerance problem and I have definitely been practicing better game selection lately. Of course I was going to feel like my hand was face up when I previously used to take shots at bigger games without giving any thought to game selection. I always ended up in games with the best players/regulars at those higher limits and they obviously had more experience than I did and outplayed me at will. In my opinion improved risk tolerance and game selection are definitely the two most important things when attempting to move up in limits.

#3 Also, as I mention above, I believe hand reading to be a function of your mental / emotional state at the time more than anything else.

Ever noticed that some days you can put people on hands right and left, other days you´re just fumbling in the dark? They haven´t changed, you haven´t changed, your skills have not diminished. But you are probably not in that same emotional state you were in when playing the first game.

Brilliant! Hand reading being a function of your mental/emotional state is some of the wonderfully written poker advice I have ever read. It is so easy to read hands when you are winning and everything is going your way and sometimes seemingly impossible when things aren't going your way. I think that people almost always write this phenomenon off as "running good" or "running bad" instead of placing the blame/success on their own state of mind. When people are losing and get put in a tough spot they just say to theirself..."Geez, I never get put in spots like this when I am winning, this is just such bad luck piled onto my already bad luck". When in actuality, they do get put in those same spots when they are winning, but their mind isn't clouded with doubt and the decisions are seen with so much more clarity. How many times have you been in a live game where you are not involved in the hand and you are watching someone agonize over what is such an obvious decision to you? It is so easy because your mental/emotional state isn't being bombarded with doubt when you are just observing the hand and have no emotional ties to the result.

Here is some more of his thoughts on results being tied to your emotional state of mind:

BW: Realizing that most regulars actually were not that solid and didn´t have their own game (most just basically have picked up somebody else’s preflop game that they´ve seen on a training video and have no clue why they are doing what they are doing - postflop they are usually spewy as xxxx). When you start zoning in how to scalp the regs, that´s when you start improving and that´s when you start beating the game for more than 1 ptbb / hour. And the basis for all of this was realizing how much of my game was dependant on playing when in the right emotional state, and learning how to maintain that mindframe.

Most of you guys have no basic technical problems when it comes to this game. You understand pot control, way ahead / way behind, position, equity, pot odds, 3-bet equity, etc. The reason you struggle with the more subtle technical aspects is that they usually require a good and clean state of mind whilst playing and analyzing. If you are on constant subtle tilt you will never understand your own image, your opponents projected image vs the way they actually play, what your history with a specific opponent really means and CORRECT adjustments (as opposed to a couple of 3 bets and now you´re waiting to shove any 2), and what all this basically boils down to; hand reading and putting your opponent on accurate ranges, and knowing what to do with those ranges. These qualities will separate a 2 ptbb winner, from a 5 ptbb winner. I believe that although I display a 4,7 ptbb winrate, I could have easily avoided many situations where I KNEW I was making the wrong play and made it anyway, and could easily have had a 5,5 - 6 ptbb winrate. I take responsibility for these results.

#4 BW: I go through a studious prep pregame, and I have papernotes around me that I use whilst playing. I have very specific tradition throughout the day. I always start, for instance, by reviewing yesterdays hands.

As for a check-lists, start small. Whenever somebody calls or raises you preflop, jusk ask yourself about his range of hands. You would not believe how many pros fail to ask themselves this one simple question (which they always used to when they were improving). We all know we should, and yet when we sit down we start autopiloting our usual abc game. We´re on the ball the first 5 minutes, and then go into droid mode. Just start out by doing this every time you have any preflop decisions. Then extend to the flop. Then extend to asking yourself about your perceived range (2nd level). If you have been autopiloting for the last 2 hrs, you will have no idea what he perceives your range to be, because you have no clue about your own image. You can add levels as you go on, but do not overdo it. And the absolute most important thing when faced with a big decision, is to first breathe and relax for a couple of seconds.

Have you ever noticed when you get sucked into a hand? Like you have an overpair and you get raised on the turn, you know you´re beat, and beofre you know it you have called anyway? Or what i call the bluff-vortex, when you start with small flop raise, and before you know it you have fired three barrels and you´re all in and get snapcalled by the nuts? What the hell just happened? A 200 bb pot lost out of nowhere!!? If, at any point, you would have just stepped back, taken a breath and realized how little sense your line makes or how narrow his range must be, you would have saved a stack. When you look at it in retrospect, it is very clear to you. This alludes to my earlier point; most of you guys are fine when it comes to the technical aspects of the game, but you need to hone some of the mental and emotional ones.

This is all great stuff, but he most important part that I took from it was developing a routine prior to playing that gets me in the right state of mind to play. I usually have a small pregame routine that I do most of the time, but I needed to expand on it a little bit. I usually take my adderall and get in the shower before I start a serious online session. Today I took an extra step to help clear my mind before I played. I took my normal shower and then set a 10 minute timer on my computer while I laid on my couch with my eyes closed thinking about the most common mistakes I make when playing and how I could avoid them. I also tried to reenact some situations where I felt I made really clear decisions that sometimes seemed tough to me. I tried to focus on the emotional state I was in when I made those decisions and get myself to be in that same mind frame before I started my session.

#5 BW: I try to live my life in accordance with many buddhist philosophies. The greatest lesson that can be applied to your poker game is the buddhist lesson of being mindful and aware of one´s thoughts and actions at all times. I believe that this is the one single most powerful tool in any game (or profession) and the separator between many of the nosebleeders, the midstakes grinders and the low-limit strugglers. Unfortunately as simple as this teaching is, it is not easy.

I think this is so true of all of the most successful people in any sport. I think a persons mental makeup/approach to a sport is way important to their natural ability. For example: Everyone on tour can hit the same shots Tiger does. Jordan didn't make a higher % of his shot attempts than other shooting guards in the league. Peyton Manning is slower than your average NFL QB and he throws aren't ones that can't be made by the rest of the QB's in the league. However, all of these people just have WAY better control over their emotions than their opponents do and this is what makes them the best at their sports.

I am sorry this was so long winded, but I really needed to get these thoughts down while it was fresh in my mind.

Oh ya, I had one of my best days ever today after my semi-meditation to start my session: +$7,221, Ballin!

Minor hiccup, but back on track....

2008-11-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

I sometimes get what I call "computer eye" when I play too much online poker or spend too much time on the computer for whatever reason. It is a pain behind usually one eye and sometimes both, but almost always results in a pretty decent sized headache. The only real cure for it is to spend less time on the computer. Most of the time it isn't bad enough that I have to quit playing, but it is really annoying to have to deal with. I have been putting a lot more hours in online recently than I am used to playing, therefore, my computer eye had been acting up a bit. I woke up one morning after playing pretty late the night before and my computer eye was still lingering. I decided to try to play online anyway and I just wasn't in the right mood from the get go. I ended up losing about $2800 in a couple of hours and quit. I won a bit back later that night and then lost some goofing of playing PLO before I went to bed. The next day I decided to take the day off from poker and I went and played racquetball with my buddy, Joe Tehan. There were some decent fish playing that night and I decided to play for just a bit. They were playing 10/20 NL and I ended up getting involved in some big hands with some of the regulars that didn't go my way. I feel like I played well, but it just takes a few hands at those stakes to add up quickly. Anyway, I think I have lost about $4600 online since I last posted, but I have done awesome playing live the past two days.

I won $4200 yesterday and I won $6600 today playing 10/20 NL at the Bellagio. Obviously, I am running very hot in that game, but it is so nice feeling like the best player in the game the majority of the time I'm in it. I am making some big hands and staying out of trouble very nicely. If I can get myself to play like I do online that game seems like a breeze. By that I mean to just always make sure I am in position when I play big pots, keeping the pots small when needed, and picking my spots well as far as not getting tangled up too much with the other solid players in the game.

So despite the minor setback with the loss online I am still on my fantastic heater thanks to my live play success. It isn't an exact figure, but I think I am up somewhere around 31K in the last 10 days or so. So, since I have averaged winning $3,000/day for the last 10 days that MUST be my expected average win rate from here on out. Therefore, I can expect to make exactly $1,095,000 in the next 365 days.....I WISH!

I plan on playing some online tourneys tomorrow including the FTOPS main event. That would a a great tournament for my heater to continue in for sure!

Well well well....

2008-11-11T04:48:00.000-08:00

If this is what it looks like around the corner I think I have turned....I LIKE IT! I thought it was a pretty solid heater after winning 12.6k in two days time, but it has only gotten better since then. Yesterday I won around $4500 playing online and then went to the Bellagio and played for over 8 hours and lost $1370 playing 10/20. I could just never get much going for me and it was a struggle the whole time even though I felt like I was the best player in the game for a majority of the night. Today, however, was a different story...I had my biggest winning day of cash games EVER! I won $9,132! I obviously ran super hot and hardly lost any races and didn't get cold decked at all that I remember. Anyway, that brings my 5 day heater to a total of somwhere in the neighborhood of $25,000....so sick to think about.

One really cool thing I have done recently is that I have gotten set up with Jeff's good buddy, Adam Estes. He is a personal financial advisor and apparently pretty darn good at it. He helped me get my Roth IRA switched over to his firm and also set me up an account that acts as a checking account in the sense that I am able to withdraw funds to it DIRECTLY from my full tilt account! That makes saving MUCH easier.

One retarded question that poker novices will sometimes ask me is "what is the best hand you have ever gotten?" or sometimes it is "have you ever made a royal flush?" It is as if they think the better the player you are the more likely it is you will make a royal flush. I couldn't even remember if I had made a royal flush before today until this hand happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3434014

I hesitated for just a second before I called his all-in bet on the turn and typed in "whoops". This was the chat that followed:

rakata: i hate you thakilla
rakata: hope you get raped by 1 big horse
spades42011: only 1?
spades42011: i guess thats all it takes ...
rakata: uhmm... ok maybe 2
rakata: 1 for him and 1 for his mom
rakata: pfff.... floped royal flush! pfff! i never get
one of this and he flop that sick hand

(Mom and Grandma, I'm sorry that you had to read that, but I thought it was pretty funny)

Anyway, it usually isn't going to be very profitable flopping a royal flush since it will be difficult to get much action on it so I was very happy to get the guy to stick all his money in drawing completely dead :)

Also, Jeff played really well after coming back so quickly after having his appendectomy. He finished T18th and T21st I think the past too weeks and ended up finished 118th on the money list which means he will maintain full status on tour next year.

All is well in the land of thakilla.

I think I might be turning the corner....

2008-11-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

I think I am finally starting to get to the point that I wanted to be at where I am comfortable playing higher limit games. I am starting to feel like I have a decent edge in most of the 5/10 NL games I play in online and just recently I have felt really good in the 10/20 NL games at the Bellagio when I have played them. I'll admit I have run really well the past two times I have played the 10/20 game at the Bellagio, but I think that is probably what it takes for me to get comfortable in the game. In the past two days online I have won $8,658 in almost 6400 hands and just over 13 hours of playing. Also, I won around $4,000 playing at the Bellagio. $12.6K in two days is preeeettty sweet if you ask me.

It is scary how much money it is possible for me to make if I can be a consistent winner in 5/10+ games online and 10/20 NL live.....I am definitely looking forward to the increased "salary".

I feel like I have put a lot of work in and made some big improvements in my game and I think Hold'em Manager has a lot to do with it. All the extra stats are really helpful once you get comfortable with them and know the proper way to apply them.

I know myself really well and it seems like everytime I have a boost in my confidence like I am currently experiencing I get cocky/complacent and stop working on my game or caring about the losses. I am going to make an effort to not let myself get out of grinding mode and try to just keep plugging away making solid profits. One thing that I think helps me to do this when I am online is to not check how much I am winning or losing until my session is finished. It unneccesarily affects my mood when I constantly check how much I am up or down during my session.

I am gonna go get a good nights sleep and get back on the grind tomorrow.

Two big days.....

2008-11-02T04:06:00.000-08:00

I have had two really good days out of the last four days of playing. There is a notoriously bad player that I keep an eye out for anytime that he is playing. I managed to find him playing twice in the last few days and both times he started right about the time I was planning on quitting. I feel like I am giving away money if I ever quit while he is playing so I try to stick it out. That resulted in me playing two 9+ hour sessions of cash games online. I don't ever remember playing that long before.

Anyway, one of the days I won almost $4800 and the other day I ended up breaking around even. I played in the $550 Venetian Deep Stack tourney today and only lasted a few hours. I built up my stack nicely and then lost an 85K pot when my opponent rivered two pair to knock me out. Oh well, I went to the Bellagio and played 10/20 NL and FINALLY had my first good session ever at 10/20. I ran pretty well in the game, but they also didn't play all that well either. I won almost $4,000 in the game in about 3 or 4 hours time. It is 4:16 am and I need to hit the sack it I plan on playing and of the Sunday tourneys online tomorrow.

My fish tank is coming along nicely...I promise to post some pictures really soon.

Also, Jeff is really putting on quite the display of guts....he is tied for 14th and on pace to lock up his spot in the top 125 with one more round to play. Hopefully he can move up another couple of spots and he'll be able to take next week off.

I was sure I was on candid camera today.....

2008-10-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, just a little background to preface this blog....When I first moved to Vegas (2.5 years ago) I went to the license branch like a good boy to get my Nevada Driver's License. I was told that since I had too many speeding tickets in Indiana I would not only have to to take the written test, but also take the skills driving test. I passed the written test and then they told me I could make an appointment a month and a half from now or wait in line for approximately 4 hours to take the skills test and even then they couldn't promise me I would get to take the test today. I chose to make an appointment and of course forgot about it when it came time to go. Fast forward about 1 year....I decided I would finally go back to try again. Since it had been so long since I had taken the written test I had to take it again. I rushed through the test and somehow failed the written test and I felt like the biggest failure at life ever after I looked around and saw a room full of white trash people that could barely speak English passing the same test I just failed. Fast forward another year....I lost my Indiana Driver's License (still valid) while I was home last so I decided I had better go try again for my license. This time I aced the written test and I had to make another appointment for the skills test a month and a half in advance. It was still a long shot that I would actually remember my appointment at that point, but I set a couple different reminders on my phone and I managed to make it to my appointment about 15 minutes early.

I gave them my paperwork and checked in for my appointment and they told me to have a seat until they called my name. I already imagined them taking forever to get to me despite me having a scheduled appointment. Surprisingly, they called my name at 11:00 am sharp. I went up to the lady that called my name and she asked me if I was Patrick, I responded "Yes, ma'am". She asked me if I had ever had a license before, I responded "Yes, ma'am". She said "thank God, I will just take you on the short route then". So far, so good.

We got outside and she checked my turn signals, brake lights, and horn. Then she got in the car and sat there for a moment. I thought about asking her where we were headed, but realized my only option was to pull forward out of my parking space so I put it in gear and she stopped me. She said "Aren't you going to wait for me to get my seat belt on?" I said "I apologize" and I waited for her to put her seat belt on before I pulled forward. She said "No, put it back in park and wait for me to get my seat belt on". I obliged and she put her belt on and then said "Did you know that can result in an automatic failure?" I said "No, I did not realize that not waiting for my passenger to put their seat belt on before I put it in gear could result in an automatic failure, I apologize." She then tells me to turn my radio off (it was barely even audible I had it turned on so low). Ridiculous, but whatever...I turned my radio off.

She tells me where to go and I follow directions all while driving with my hands in the "Ten and Two" position. We get to the first stop light, which was less than two blocks away, and I come to a complete stop before taking one hand off of the wheel and rest it on my lap. While we are waiting at the stop light I say to her "Just out of curiosity, is it a penalty if I don't drive with my hands at the "Ten and Two" positions?" She says that it is so I make it a point to always drive with my hands in the correct position. I did take one hand off the wheel on 4-5 occasions throughout the rest of the test....probably 3 times to rest it on my lap again while we were stopped at lights and maybe 2 times to itch my face. I know she is going to be a stickler so I make sure to pay attention to the speed limit and stay comfortably under it so she won't have anything to complain about. I signaled everywhere I should and always checked my blind spot. During the parallel parking portion of the test I pulled forward even with the first barrel, backed in and just as I got close to the curb I pulled forward approximately 2 feet and then backed in the rest of the way. I then pulled forward to get the car straight (or parallel) in the parking spot. At this point I was probably 3 feet from the front barrels and 15 feet from the back barrels so I backed up a few feet so I would be in the center of the parking spot. Flawless performance, in my opinion.

At one point during the test I asked her what her success rate was for people passing the skills test and she told me it depends on the person. I correctly told her that it didn't really depend on the person, she still has to have an overall success rate for all of her drivers combined. She told me then that is was "pretty good".

Now is when I felt like the candid camera session began. I parked my car and we went inside to "discuss my test". She had another co-worker come in and observe out discussion. She asked me how long I had lived in Vegas and I told her "about two years." She said, "So you should be familiar with the roads around here then, correct?" I said "Yes, ma'am". Then she listed some errors that I had made during my driving test.

1. At several times during the drive I was driving 35 MPH when the speed limit was 45 MPH and during some other times I was driving 30 MPH when the speed limit was 40 MPH

2. Often times, I turned my turn signal on too early when making turns.

3. I have a tendency to driving with one hand on the wheel.

4. I didn't allow her to get her seat belt on before I began to drive.

5. There were too many maneuvers in my parallel parking.

She then stated that these were all very vital things. Each time she read off another of my "violations" I could not help myself from smirking at first and full blown smiling by the end of our "discussion". She then told me that I had failed my test and I would need to reschedule an appointment.

I obviously know I will never get anywhere by arguing with her so I was polite and just said OK, and got my paper work back from her and went on my way to reschedule another appointment. Guess what? The next available appointment is on December 10th.

I have no idea why she had it out for me, but she clearly did not want me to pass. I honestly thought it was a joke until the very end when I got up to leave the discussion room....it wasn't a joke.

Short one...

2008-10-28T02:13:00.001-07:00

I lost yesterday about what I won the day before and today I played for almost 6 hours and won $47 or something silly. Playing only 6 tables has actually been kinda fun. I am able to pay more attention to obscure player specific stats and I think it is making me a better player.

I talked to Jeff today and he is planning on leaving Tuesday morning to play in this weeks PGA tourney. He thought he was done for the year, but he only missed one tournament. He said he hit about 30 balls today and was hitting his 8 iron 130 yards (he was hitting it about 175 in Vegas). He obviously won't be 100% for the tournament, but he said he didn't want to look back a month from now and wonder if he could have played. I am actually really excited to see how he manages to play. I think it could actually help him in a sense....it will most certainly have to improve his putting and will force him to think his way around the golf course if he wants to score well without just bombing it on every hole (not that he is reckless when playing).

I am going to be ordering some new fish and corals for my tank tomorrow. I'll post some pictures in here when I get some more stuff added.

Super busy.....

2008-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

I have been insanely busy as of late and I haven't had time to do any blogging. Not only have I not had time to blog I haven't had hardly anytime to play poker for about the last 17 days or so. Today was the first time I played any serious poker since then. I played live a few times with friends, but it was either really small limits or I was tired and played short sessions. I played for about 3.5 hours today and I ran well enough to win $1132 which was a nice way to return.

Even though I haven't played much poker lately I have learned some stuff about poker during that time. Mainly, you can't force a rush and monetary goals can do as much harm as they can good. I recently set a lofty goal of winning $20K in 2 weeks and I started out on fire and was on pace to do so. I ended up not even getting close to my goal and I am not even really sure how much I lost back from my peak of being up around $12,500, but I know it wasn't good. I tried to play higher and got really reckless with the amount of tables I was playing considering the stakes that I was playing. I believe I play well enough to beat 5/10 and 10/20 NL online, but I am either not comfortable enough or don't play well enough to beat those limits when I am playing anymore than 6 tables at a time. It is probably pushing it to be playing 6 tables of those limits, especially when I was trying to mix in some 25/50 as well. When you are winning you feel invincible and don't even notice the deterioration of your play by playing two tables. It takes some discipline to realize this type of stuff and isn't fun to admit.

I feel really fresh right now since I have had so much time off from poker, but I am going to take it slow and limit myself to playing no more than 6 tables at a time and I am going to start out playing mostly 2/4 and 3/6 NL until I win 15-20 buy-ins at those levels. Only then will I start to mix in some 5/10 games, but I am going to try to keep it at a maximum of 6 tables for the time being. I think I can focus more on playing differently against specific players and pick up on some spots that offer value that I miss when playing 8+ tables. Taking away two tables will really lower my hands played per hour, but I think it can be made up for with a higher win rate.

So, during my time away from poker I:

Went home for a buddy's wedding.
Ate like a pig at the fall festival
Flew back to Vegas to caddy for Jeff
Picked up Matt to have him stay with me
Picked up Brian and Jason to have them stay with me
Dropped off Matt
Dropped of Brian and Jason
Didn't have one minute of time to relax
Ate out every single meal
Bought two new fish for my tank.
Played pit games about 10X more than I did poker
Went out to clubs about 4 times (4 more than I told myself I would ever go again in my life).
Stayed out late about 90% of the nights (past 2am) as the only sober person.

It was a busy few weeks and I am very much looking forward to getting back to work.

Edit: I know alot of people that read my blog follow Jeff's progress too. Fyi, he had an appendectomy on Monday and is most likely out for the season. There is an outside chance he could play in the last tourney of the year. It sucks because he was 123rd on the money list and will surely be passed during the last 3 tourneys of the year while he sits out. He will still retain sis top 150 status, but it is a pretty big deal to be in the top 125 compared to the top 150. I am pretty bummed about it, but nowhere near as bummed as Jeff is.

Sigh....

2008-10-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

If I believed in jinxes I would say I jinxed myself by talking about not having had any big losses lately. I lost $3,000 playing 10/20 NL at the Bellagio :( I know I have a limited sample size in the 10/20, but I have been amazingly card dead during the times I have played it. They play super duper loose in that game, and there is a lot of money to be made if I could ever get a hand to play. I played for about 5 hours and had KK twice, AK once, AQ once, 99 once.

I folded 99 preflop to a tight short stack that raised it to $100 and I was out of position to the rest of the table (I would have flopped a set).
The first time I had KK I limped under the gun and it was one of about 10 pots the whole night that didn't get raised preflop. Qd Jd 5h flop, I checked and there was a bet and a raise by two tight players before it got to me so I just folded....one guy flopped Queens and Jacks.
The second time I had KK I had to chop when it folded to me in the small blind and the big blind was the biggest maniac you have ever seen.
When I had AK it was a straddled pot and I was in the big blind, about 5 limpers and I raised it to $320, the maniac that straddled just so happened to have AA that hand. He raised to $700 and I called and check folded on the ten high flop. I am not sure how to play this hand...I suppose it could be a fold preflop, because I know he isn't messing around since he knows how tight I am and I probably won't get much action if I flop a pair anyway (unless he has me beat with a hand like AA, which he had).
When I had AQ there was a few limpers and I raised it to $120 and 4 people called. The flop was AQJ. We got it all-in on the turn and he flopped a straight with KTos. I could have possible gotten away from this hand if I was deeper, but I only had $1600 in front of me to start the hand.

These are the kinds of live sessions that make me play so much more online than I do live. This boring stretch of cards would have come and gone without me even realizing it online and I would have had hands at 7 other tables at the same time to choose from. Josh and I are gonna go watch the Kimbo Slice fight now.

So, after my stupid set back from playing live these are my new results:

Online: +$12,558
Live: -$3,010
Total: +$9,548
Amount needed to reach goal: $10,452

I definitely have my work cut out for me now if I am going to reach my goal....gonna be putting in some serious hands tomorrow hopefully.

The shots are getting more comfortable to me....

2008-10-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

I decided that I figured out the secret to feeling comfortable playing higher limits....play even higher! Seriously, then the limits you were wanting to be comfortable at don't seem so big and scary. I took some real shots today and it went ok I suppose. I noticed there was a full ring 25/50 NL game running on Stars today and I thought about maybe buying in short and seeing if I could double up or something. Then I decided that if I wasn't going to play it just like I had been playing the rest of my games I shouldn't be playing it. Therefore, I bought it for the full $5,000 and told myself if I noticed that I was playing scared at all I would make myself quit the game. There is no sense in taking shots if you are totally going to change up your style that has worked to get you to where you are now. I played fine, but didn't get in any good situations and I ended up losing $1600 or so....the good news is that it made me totally comfortable playing in the 5/10 games I was playing in. I also had two 10/20 games that I felt really good in as well. The 25/50 game got short handed and I quit, but I was running very hot and playing well on the rest of my tables. Then all of the sudden I got in a bunch of bad spots all at once and I could feel myself start to tilt a bit so I decided to stop playing. I was up as much as $4200 and I ended up winning $1427 in only about 2.5 hours. The $4200 would have put me on a really good pace to get to my goal, but $1400 helps out too.

I am gonna head to the Bellagio and put in a few hours there since I was feeling tilty online.

New Totals:

Online: +$12,558
Live: -$10
Total: +$12,548
Amount needed to reach goal: $7,452

Quick recap...

2008-10-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

I played online for the last two days for a total of about 9 hours and I won $2,392. I played live last night for a couple of hours with Clint and Charlie and lost $351....even though I lost playing live I did pwn a guys face by smooth calling with KK preflop and folding on the flop when he check raised me on a QT6 board. He showed a set of queens and I lost the minimum for sure....sometimes I play too good for them :)

Thanks to my dad for pointing out that not only am I a luckbox in poker, but I am also a math retard (see comment for me previous blog).

My new correct progress report loks like this:

Online: +$11,131
Live: -$575
Total: +$10,556
Amount needed to reach goal: $9,444

I only have about a week left to get to my $20K, and it is going to be very tough...I am going to give it my best shot.

I am going to meet Clint, Charlie, and their ladies for dinner at the Bellagio somewhere and then go with them to their national softball tournament game.

**EDIT**

I played the 10/20 NL at the Bellagio for 4 or 5 hours tonight and won $565. I didn't realize I was down $575 playing live up until this point or I would have tried to squeak out another $10 somewhere. Anyway, this is an updated progress report:

Online: +$11,131
Live: -$10
Total: +$11,121
Amount needed to reach goal: $8,879

I have 5 days of playing left and it seems like my goal is within reach, but it is still going to be very tough. I have managed to make it this far without any serious losing days and if I can avoid them the rest of the way I think I have a good shot.

I think most of my readers probably already know, but just in case they don't Jeff Overton is leading the PGA tournament this week after 2 rounds of play. I'll be keeping an eye on him tomorrow while I plug away at my goal.

Well, maybe there is hope.

2008-10-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

The administrator at the hold'em manager forums says that they are having issues with the calculations of the all-in equity stat. I am not so sure I believe him, but it does get a little confusing sometimes so we'll have to wait and see.

I played last night and not very well....probably because I have finally realized I am just a huge luckbox.

New update on my challenge:

Online: +$8739
Live: -$224
Total: +$8515
Amount needed to reach goal: $10585

Well, I got the worst news I have gotten in a long time today....

2008-10-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

Warning: This will most likely turn into a long boring blog unless you either find humor in my misery or you are into poker stats.

I recently purchased and downloaded the newest poker database software, Hold'em Manager. They have a very cool new feature in this software that calculates your all-in equity. For those of you that don't know what all-in equity is (Don't worry mom and dad, I am sure there are several of my poker friends that need this explanation too) or how to figure it out I will do my best to explain what it means.

Your equity in a hand is equal to the amount of the pot that you are supposed to win considering the chance of your hand winning the pot. For example if you and your opponent both put $1,000 into an otherwise empty pot it would contain $2,000 to go to the winning hand. If you were holding pocket Aces and they were holding pocket Kings you would have about an 80% chance of winning the pot and your opponent would have a 20% chance. Therefore, your equity in the hand is $1600 and that is how much you you would get back if you got what you deserved. However, it doesn't work like that in poker you either get the entire pot or none of the pot. So, if your pocket Aces held up and you won the entire $2,000 your winnings would be $1,000 for the hand, but you would have profited $400 more than you deserved to. Basically your all-in equity stat disregards the actual results of the hand and keeps track of how much you should win by calculating your equity in all the hands were you got all your money in with more cards to come.

So, analyzing your all-in equity stat is one way you can somewhat measure how lucky you have been in the past. You compare the actual amount of money that you have won to the amount that your all-in equity says you have won. If you have won more actual money than it says you should have one then you are getting lucky more than your fair share of the time. For example: Maybe your pocket aces have held up when you were up against pocket kings 90% of the time instead of the 80% they are supposed to during the last year of your poker playing. This would result in you winning more money than you deserved to and your actual winnings would be higher than your all-in equity says you should be.

So onto the bad news....I had to let Hold'em Manager run all night long so that it could import the almost 350,000 hands I have saved on my computer. This all-in equity stat was the main reason that I switched to this software. I swear I had dreams about what my graph was going to look like when I finally got to see it. So, when I got up this morning it was done importing and I fired up my graph and MUCH to my dismay my database showed me that I had actually won around $77,000 and my all-in equity said that I should have won around $55,000. You may be thinking to yourself....Congratulations, you were lucky to have won more than your share! While it is true that I did get lucky over the last year of playing online that is devastating to my confidence. I was already a little bummed out over my win rate being as low as it was, but now come to find out I have just been getting lucky all along just to keep my win rate where it was! I mean what if I would have gotten as unlucky as I got lucky? I would have actually won about $33,000 over the last year. That is some scary stuff. People always discuss how many hands it takes to get a true win rate. Well, I am here to tell you that the number is somewhere way above 350,000. I am always the first person to discount anything someone says when they are complaining about running bad, because everyone has been through tough stretches of poker. This new discovery has me reeling though....maybe I haven't really ever run bad compared to other poker players?

I feel like I could never do a good enough job of explaining how discouraging finding something like this out is. I feel like I have been duped into thinking I am a great poker player (I don't even think I am great) by just having a lucky run of cards over the last 350,000 hands when in actuality my stats show that I should be considerably less successful than I have been. I have put in a lot of work on my poker game in invested a lot of time and feel like I deserve all of the results I have gotten, but apprently that just isn't the case.

I think this would be the equivilant of someone training for a marathon for one years time with a specific time based goal in mind. This time goal of theirs would be one that would be very well respected by their running peers and impressive if accomplished. Imagine that they trained on the same marathon course by theirself for the entire year and they had mile markers set up along they way so they could keep track of their time splits and their progress throughout the year. Finally, near the end of their year of training they were getting very close to reaching the time goal and they were ready to run in the big race the following weekend. Then just to be sure that everything was on the up and up and to be safe they measured the course and mile markers they had been training on all year and as they measured them they realized that every mile marker was only .9 miles away from the next one and their entire course was only 23.5 miles instead of the normal 26.2 miles!

How do you think their ability to perform in the marathon would be affected? I don't think they would even be able to run the first 23.5 miles as well as they had been running it during training. They would have no confidence in theirself and they would be worried about being outed by their peers as being a fraud.

This is getting retardedly long so I am going to stop writing and maybe write more about this tomorrow or another time. It is safe to say that my confidence is slightly rattled and I am not too happy that my results didn't deserve to be as good as they ended up being (and to think that I was disappointed with my FALSE win rate!).

Sigh...bed time

Short day, but a good one.

2008-09-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

I only played about 3 hours today, but I still won a decent chunk of money. Our cable internet was finally supposed to be ready today, but of course when they came to set it up it couldn't go as planned. Our cable modem was linked to the account in my name and our account at our new house is under Josh's name so I had to be on the phone for about an hour getting that straightened out. Then once I got the modem working I couldn't get the router to work. I decided to take a break from fooling with that to play for a bit and I promptly got disconnected twice in about 15 minutes so back to work on the new internet I went. I finally got it working and played a fairly short session. I decided that I was going to give poker stars a try since they always have more full rung games running than full tilt does.

The games seemed pretty good there, but I suppose it could just be because none of the players on stars are used to the way I play. Then again, I don't know how they play either, but there seemed to be plenty of bad players on there.

On full tilt I lost $945, but I won $3689 for a total profit of $2,744. I need to get some poker tracker issues resolved with poker stars so I can just use that to see how much I won/lost each day.

Update on my challenge progress:

Online: +$9,508
Live: -$224
Total: +$9,284
Amount needed to reach goal: $10,716

That is some pretty good progress if I do say so myself! I still have about 8 or 9 days left to reach my goal. It will still be very tough, but I am really in the groove as far as my poker game and my willingness to put in the hours.

Time to go get some dinner and find something entertaining to do tonight.

**EDIT**
I couldn't think of anything exciting to do after dinner and I was bored so I decided to watch a cardrunner's video while I played two tables of 3/6 NL. I ran pretty well and won $734 in only 72 hands. I also goofed around and played some 30/60 Stud Hi/Lo with the intent to hit and run. I am definitely not a favorite in this game, but I thought it would be fun to goof around in. I ante'd off about $50 before I made a flush on my first 5 cards and he folded. I won $44 playing that a quickly left the game. So, I made an additional $778 to add to my challenge results.

They now look like this:

Online: +$10,268
Live: -$224
Total: +$10,044
Amount needed to reach goal: $9,056

Over half way there!

Meh...

2008-09-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

I had another good day online winning $1330 in about 3,000 hands, but I lost $1468 playing 10/20 at the Bellagio. The game wasn't very good, but I told myself I was going to try to get more comfortable in that game so I played it anyway. I hate the feeling of thinking that other people in the game are better than me and it is no fun when they are the one applying the pressure to me. I don't really think they are better players than me, but it will just take some time before I get used to playing in a bigger game with deeper stacks. I had a few cooler hands today online, but I am sure I was on the good end of some that I am failing to remember. I am definitely feeling more comfortable playing the 5/10 games online. Full Tilt has a limited number of full ring games running at 3/6 and higher so I got some money on stars, because I noticed they have WAY more full ring games running than full tilt does. It will suck not getting rakeback while playing on there, but the FPP's you earn make up for that a little bit. Hopefully, the ability to play more higher stakes full ring games will more than make up for the lack of rakeback.

I need to hit the sack so I can get up and own some more people online tomorrow.

So far this is how my challenge is going:

Online: +$6,764
Live: -$224
Total: +$6,540
Amount needed to reach goal: $13,460

Today was my first losing day of the challenge. I won't be able to have too many of those if I am going to reach my goal. I suppose if I am going to have a losing day one where I lose $150 isn't so bad.

Sorry the content of my blogs has been painfully boring lately, but I am writing them more to keep myself motivated to reach my goals than anything else at the moment. I promise to post some cool stories or something entertaining soon.

I had a very up and down day.....

2008-09-28T03:03:00.000-07:00

I ended up winning $1759 and I played a really long session online (about 6 hours). I increased the limits that I played and unfortunately I did the worst at the highest limit that I played. I played some 10/20 NL and lost a little over a buy-in there, but did very well in the 5/10 and 3/6 NL. The good thing about being uncomfortable when playing 10/20 is that it makes 5/10 and 3/6 not seem nearly as big and I am much more comfortable playing those. I am not quite sure that is the way it is supposed to work, but I guess whatever it takes to move up in limits will have to do.

I never was really down today, but I was up almost $4,000 at one point and I had a lot of other fluctuations along the way.

So after 2 days of really solid grinding this is what my 2 week/$20K challenge looks like:

Online: +$4,746
Live: +$1,224
Total: +$5,970
Amount needed to reach goal: $14,030

Just as it always seems to happen when I am in the mood to do some serious grinding I have a visitor in town tomorrow so I am not sure how much playing I will get to do tomorrow. One of my fraternity brothers, Ben Hendren and his wife Hope, are in town and we are going to go to Red Rock to hang out in the sportsbook and watch some NFL football.

**Edit**

Just as I was going to bed I had a message pop up on my computer that said I my seat was open in a game I had been waiting on. I had been on the waiting list for about 2 hours and one of the biggest fish online was still in the game. It was a 10/20 NL 6max deep table. I immediately got stuck $1400 while laying in bed and then I put an amazing cooler on the fish to end up winning $688. Real quick: I raised with KQ, he called with 66, the flop was QQ6 and I turned the 4th Q. Somehow he still paid me off about $1400 additional once the 3rd Q hit the turn....I don't know what he planned on beating, but it was still unlucky for him. In the 15 minutes I was in the game he went from having around $7K in front of him to being busted and off the site. Glad I got a little bit of it.

New challenge update:
Online: +$5,434
Live: +$1,224
Total: +$6,658
Amount needed to reach goal: $13,342

Predictions....

2008-09-27T06:51:00.001-07:00

So last time I set a goal it was to play 30 hours online and win $5000 in a week. It has been two weeks since I set that goal and I am just now to the point where I have profited $5,000 online. I don't know how many hours I played in that time, but I am sure it was more than 30 and it took me longer than the week it was supposed to.

Recently, I have been talking to a few different really successful poker players whose approach to the game I respect a lot. We discussed a lot of stuff that was very interesting to me, but I was really surprised at how much money these guys claimed to have won and also how much they said they had spent on unnecessary things during their poker careers. I like to spend my fair share of money, but I have nowhere near the spending problems that these guys have. I feel like these players that I have been talking to are all great players, but I don't feel like they are THAT much better than I am. This line of thinking raised a few questions for me.

1. Why have they won so much more money than me?
2. How can they still have so much money despite outlandish spending habits when I have relatively low spending habits?
3. What makes them so much better than me?

Thinking about all of these questions made me realize that my work ethic and/or desire to make serious money is way lower than all of theirs. When I say serious money I mean the kind of money that goes above and beyond what it takes to live the very comfortable lifestyle that I currently live. These guys are all grinders that play way more hours than I do and at higher stakes. I feel like I am certainly good enough to beat the stakes that they are playing, but I don't want to put in the time to get comfortable playing those same stakes. I have moved up in limits since I moved to Vegas, but it has been an amazingly slow progression (in my opinion). I remember feeling incredibly uncomfortable when I was trying to move up and become a regular 2/4 NL player online. I felt totally exposed and as though I was playing my hands face up. I felt the same way when I tried to move up by taking shots at the 5/10 NL live games. I played so tight that it was almost impossible for me to book a winning session without putting a huge cooler on one of my oponents. Now I feel like I am the best player in any 2/4 NL game online or 5/10 NL live game that I play in and couldn't be more comfortable than I am in either of those games. This is getting to be a bit of a ramble, but it boils down to the fact that if I want to make serious money I need to make a serious effort at putting in more hours at higher limit games. I simply have to get more comfortable playing these higher stakes to make the kind of money I know I am capable of. Hopefully, I am going to start playing some more 10/20 NL live and a lot more 5/10 NL online.

Today, I felt like I played really awesome online and had some good results to show for it. I ended up winning a little over $3,000 online and over $1200 live. It feels good to have a $4,200 day and I think that shouldn't be too uncommon for me if I am able to get comfortable playing these higher stakes.

I predicted to Matt today that I can feel a big 2-3 week heater coming up and that today was going to be the start of it (this was predicted early in my online session today). I am really going to try to cram as much poker as I can in for the next two weeks solid and see if I can put up some of the types of figures these guys were talking about making. I am setting a lofty goal for myself of making $20,000 before October 11th. It will be very hard to get there, but I feel like it can be done. I always set goals that I know are very attainable, but this time I am purposely setting one that is very difficult and should I reach it I will feel a real sense of accomplishment.

So if I count today as my start this is how my progress towards $20K in 2 weeks looks:
Online: +$3,051
Live: +$1224
Total: +$4,275
Amount needed to reach goal: $15,725

I finally did some grinding....

2008-09-17T00:34:00.001-07:00

I had planned on really grinding when I got back to Vegas and while I was playing quite a bit it was more gambling than grinding. I was playing mostly PLO and playing a little higher than usual and trying to win a lot of money quickly. My swings were pretty big both up and down with yesterday being a pretty big downer. I lost almost $5,000 yesterday, but I was up pretty good before that so it didn't hurt too badly. That is part of the problem...it never seems to hurt when I lose anymore, because I have so much money in my account and I know I won't really miss the money if I lose.

Well, today I really got back to the grind and played some of my bread and butter full ring no limit. I played mostly 2/4, but also included some 3/6. I played abut 3 hours and was up around $200 when I noticed myself not playing my best. I took a break, ate some lunch and then started playing again. I played much better and won some big pots in the next 3 hours. I ended up winning $2,221 in just over 6 hours of playing. I ran a little better than I can expect in the long run, but it wasn't too out of the ordinary to win that much in 3500+ hands.

Josh and I then went to the Bellagio and played 5/10 live for a couple of hours and I was in one of the best games I have been in a while. I won $710 there.

So for all the ups and downs I have had this week I am up about $1200 total. It could be better, but it could also be much worse.

Oh, before I went home for my reunion I was down to 212 lbs. I ate like a total pig while I was home and when I weighed myself just 2 weeks later I was at 221 lbs. This morning I was back down to 216. I have been eating great (except tonight I did eat some In and Out on the way to the Bellagio), but I'm having trouble getting my swimming done. Hopefully I can get back into the swimming again soon. I want to get to 200 or maybe lower, but I don't have any time frame to do this in.

One week goal....

2008-09-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

I am starting small. I want to get back into the groove of making money on a steady basis.

I want to play 30 hours of online poker by next Sunday night (September 22) and I would like to make $5,000.

Sorry for the low content, but I just want to get something written down before I start playing.

I'm ready to get back into my "routine"

2008-09-11T00:31:00.000-07:00

I hardly have anything in my life that resembles anything that could be confused with a routine, but believe it or not I am ready to get back into my routine. I always do a lot of traveling and am constantly having friends visit me, but I usually manage to mix in some pretty decent stretches of hardcore poker playing between these times of leisure. However, since I did so well in my tournament I have been rather unmotivated to buckle down and get back to my routine. It seems like I haven't played any serious online poker during this entire time. I have had people come visit me, gone to visit other friends on several occasions, and gone home to visit family and friends for what seems like a month straight. I have spent lots of money on random stuff, lost considerably more than I have won playing poker, and eaten like a pig all while failing to exercise outside of the one time I swam in the lake at home.

I am really looking forward to getting back to Vegas and going grocery shopping for some decent healthy food. I don't want the stupid whole-foods type of healthy stuff, I just want to buy a ton of healthy choice/lean cuisine frozen meals and some applesauce and/or carrots type of snacky food. It sounds so boring, but I can't wait until my days consist of: getting up around noon, going for a swim, doing some push-ups and sit-ups so I can rationalize not going to the gym to really work out, weighing myself and charting my weight loss progress, eating some healthy frozen meal, taking a shower, playing 5-6 hours of hardcore online poker, winning lots of money and playing increasingly sharper for everyday that I stick to my routine, eating something else pretty healthy for dinner that I can make at home, watching some TV, maybe going to play some live poker at night, avoid doing any chores that can possibly be put off until a later date, not receiving or making one phone call for an entire day, and getting in my own bed with my own TV playing the same episode of sportscenter over and over all night long once I fall asleep about 3 minutes after getting into bed. I always claim that I don't like sticking to schedules, but I am pretty excited about getting back to this one and I think it is about the only kind that I am capable of enjoying. I believe this to be true because it is one that I chose, has virtually zero accountability to anyone except me, and is full of stuff that I think are fun/rewarding. Even with a schedule that is so non-demanding I am sure I will again grow bored with it and get burnt out sooner than I thought possible which will result in me searching for my next vacation stop along the way. Until then I look forward to getting home and making the most of my fresh start and clear mind.

I hope to get some moderately short term goals posted in here before I get back to to work so I have something to shoot for.

Not much to blog about....

2008-08-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

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....

2008-08-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

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.....

2008-08-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

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.....

2008-08-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

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....

2008-08-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Its official....

2008-07-25T20:17:00.001-07:00

I am the worst friend/person ever. Landon has been looking forward to me playing in his member/guest golf tournament for about 3 years now I believe. I used to never be able to play in it because it corresponded with the Evansville City Golf tournament. Landon was secretly (not very secretively I might add) happy that I got disqualified from the City tourney last year because that meant I would be able to play with him in his member/guest golf tourney. In order to play in it you have to have a GHIN handicap card and it is apparently a pretty big deal with all of the extra stuff that goes along with the tournament such as a calcutta and banquet. There is also a really long waiting list to get into the tournament. After quite a bit of trouble I finally got my GHIN handicap card in working order and we were one of the last teams to get into the field. Once we found out we were in I booked my flight. Finally, all of the pieces were in place for Landon and I to play in his Member/Guest tourney.....

I played online all day and left my phone in my bedroom. When I finally looked at my phone I had 3 missed calls and a text message from Jeff saying that he needed a caddie for this week in Reno! The last time Jeff called me at the last second to have me caddy for him Derek and Joey were in town and I decided to be a good friend and turned Jeff down. I instantly regretted it and while I had a great time with Derek and Joey it is a sickening feeling to pass up such a great opportunity. Before I called Jeff I called Landon to tell him the position I was in. He was very understanding and said something like very fatherly like "I won't be mad at you if you choose to caddy for Jeff...I know it is a good opportunity for you...I'll just be dissapointed". Thats my favorite quality of Landon as a friend is that is totally honest with you and is probably the most rational person I know.

So, its official, I am the worst friend ever and I let Landon down by telling him that I couldn't play in his tournament that we had been planning on on playing in for so long. I know he was looking forward to this tournament a lot and I feel like the biggest jerk ever for backing out. I feel like one of my best qualities as a friend is that I'll never let you down under any circumstances. As my buddy Clint likes to say..."If I say I am gonna go fishing with you, you might as well start the grease". Well, I this time I left Landon stranded with a pan full of hot grease. I feel like I have a pretty good reason and I think he understands.

I'm sorry Landon :(

The good news...I'll be caddying for Jeff in the Reno/Tahoe Open July 31- August 3rd when he wins his first PGA Tour Event!

Update from last week and start of a new one.....

2008-07-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a very crazy 7th day of my one week challenge on Tuesday. I started the day up $1,136 and even though things hadn't gone exactly as I had planned throughout the week I still felt really good about how I was playing and I was all geared up to have a big day. I played a few tables of 5/10 along with my normal 2/4 and 3/6 tables. Absolutely everything that could go wrong did go wrong and before I knew it I was down over $2800 on the day and now I was stuck around $1,700 for the week now and I was only 3 hours into my session. I was already thinking about what the title of my blog was going to be..."D-MORE-UH-LIES-DUH" was what I was leaning towards using (say it out loud if you don't get it). I could feel my face getting hot and I wasn't thinking very clearly. I certainly wasn't in the mood to be making any big folds and I knew I wasn't going to be able to play my best if I kept playing.

I felt like my cards were face up just like I always do when I try to move up in limits. I remember when I felt like that about playing 2/4 NL and thought I would never be able to beat that limit. Simply put the players are better at 5/10 than they are at 2/4 and I either don't play well enough to beat it or I just haven't gotten comfortable enough with the higher stakes to be able to play well enough to beat it. It is a pretty horrible feeling when you feel like you can't pull the trigger when you want to make a play just because the money means more or you feel like the players know exactly what you are up to. Also, It is really amazing how being tentative or playing with scared money in poker can lead to you not playing your normal style that you know is a proven winner.

Anyway, I quit all of my tables and went to find something to eat and drink to see if I could regroup enough to be able to play any more poker for the day. I did a good job of settling down and decided that I would try to play some more poker, but I was only going to let myself play 2/4 NL. It wasn't easy to play smaller after getting stuck so much earlier in the day. Its not fun when you realize that no matter how hot you run you pretty much can't get even for the day since you are playing so much smaller. Well, I am glad I decided to play more, because I ran super hot and ended up almost getting all the way back to even playing only 2/4...I ended up playing great and only losing $122 on the day. That may be the best $122 I have ever lost.

I ended up having way worse results than I wanted to for the week, but I still ended up winning $1,014 and I did reach my goal of playing 35 hours (almost 36). I feel bad complaining about a $1,000 week, but it really is way below expectation. It makes it not so bad considering I was stuck $1,700 with 2 hours left to go in my week though :)

Well, even though I just took a vacation to regroup with poker playing 35 hours in a week and having sub par results I felt like I needed a small break from playing for a day or two. It just so happened to be perfect timing that Nick and his boss, Patrik Antonius, had a golf match with two of Patrik's friends that they had been planning for about a year. When they made the bet, Patrik's friend, Jani, was the best golfer of the four and Patrik, Nick, and Mikko were just starting to take golf seriously. If they would have played the match a year ago Jani and Mikko would have been the clear favorite, but Nick and Patrik have worked super hard on their games since then and it was a totally different story a year later.

The bet was a 36 hole match and they just added up the total strokes for both teams to determine the winner. They are all pretty good friends so the decided to keep the wager friendly and settled on a reasonable $200,000 to be paid by the losing team!! Nick and Patrik have a friend, Jimmy, that usually caddies and coaches them when they are playing in matches or just practicing. Jimmy is usually responsible for reading both of their putts, helping them both with club selection, cleaning both of their clubs and balls, and keeping both of their heads on straight in general. Since this match was going to be for so much money Nick decided to take me along as his coach/caddie so that Jimmy could focus on Patrik since he needs the most attention. It was pretty cool to be caddying in a match for $200,000, but not nearly as exciting as you might think. The reason it wasn't so exciting is because the match wasn't any near being a close match. The first day Nick shot 78, Patrick shot 82, Jani shot 86, and Mikko shot 88. Nick and Patrik had basically an insurmountable lead of 14 hots going into the second round. After 9 holes on the second day they were up 22 shots total and Jani and Mikko conceded the match and the $200,000. Nick gave me a generous $1,000 for helping out and it was a nice change of pace from poker. They were playing again today and Nick offered to have me help again, but I don't think I could have handled another day of it. Today they were planning on playing 36 holes and saying that these guy play slow is the biggest understatement of the year! The first day took us about 7.5 hours to play 18 holes and Nick and I got there about 3 hours before the match to practice. The second day took us about 3.5 hours to play only 9 holes. I guess I can't blame them for taking their time since they are playing for $200,000, but you have never seen 3 slower golfers than Patrik, Mikko, and Jani. I would have definitely gone again today if I thought I would improve their chances of winning, but I am positive that Mikko and Jani are drawing dead again today....which will cost them another $100,000. They are playing a best ball match for $50,000 and a scramble for $50,000.

I know this blog is really long already so I will just do a quick summary of my day of poker today... I played for about 5 hours and I was around even about 4.5 hours into my day. I finally ran good in a big pot where a guy turned a straight vs. my top set. We got it in on the turn and the board paired on the river and I won about a $2,000 pot. Ahhhh, it feels good to suck out once in a while :) Then I won a buy-in at 2/4 NL with JJ all-in preflop against 99. With my nice rush to end the day I ended up winning $1,496 and am off to a great start for the week.

This is too long and I am too hungry to proofread...deal with it.

Sigh.....

2008-07-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Just sigh....I played for almost exactly 5 hours today and lost $802. I mean $800 isn't the end of the world, but it just sucks when you lose $2,300 in the last 500 hands to end up losing $800. So after starting off great the first two days of the week I am down about $2,000 during the next 4 days and 10,000 hands. 10K hand losing stretches are certainly no fun and pretty demoralizing when you feel like you have played well during it.

I was just sitting here pouting and thinking about what to write when I started questioning whether I really did play well during these last 10K hands or if I was just telling myself that I did...Here is what I came up with:

It is crazy to think that even over stretches of 10K hands your results really have very little to do with how well you actually played. I mean sure I could have lost a lot more than I did had I played really terrible, but I can say that I honestly tried to make the best decisions every single time I was faced with one. I did make one crying call today for an extra $400 on the river when I was sure that I was beat. Other than that hand I can't think of much I would have done different if I had the same situations over again and all of the same information was available to me.

In 10,000 hands there are ton of marginal situations that either go your way or they don't. If you run hot in those situations you are going to end up doing really well. If you run poorly you are going to lose no matter how well you played. In theory, if you run neutral in those spots and you are a winning player you will end up winning an amount that is equal to the edge you have over your competition. I obviously can't think of all the marginal situations that happened during that 10,000 hand stretch so I can't be sure if I ran good or bad in them, but I feel pretty confident that I ran below expectation. In fact, just that one huge $3K pot that I lost a few days ago was enough to make me a winner over those 10K hands. So, assuming that I ran neutral in all other marginal situations, I could say that I ran $2,400 below expectation since I had 85% equity in a $3,000 pot that I lost. Just using that one hand as my only variable over those hands you could say that 85% of the time I should have won around $1,000 and I should have lost the $2,000 that I actually lost only 15% of the time.

I guess what I am trying to say is....ITS NOT MY FAULT! haha. Noone ever thinks it is their fault when they lose, but I really do try to take responsibility for my losses when they happen. I can say that I played really close to my A-game throughout most of this stretch so there really isn't much responsibility to be taken here....unless my A-game weren't good enough to be beating the limits I am playing, but I know that is not the case.

I'll have better luck tomorrow. One more 5 hour day of playing will get me to my 35 hour goal and that is a solid week of playing.

After 6 days:
35 hours
+$1,136
15,383 hands
super duper crappy hourly rate of $37.27 and a win rate of 1.31 BB/100

I played in the British Open today....

2008-07-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

....of Frisbee Golf. Kevin and I went to play frisbee golf when we woke up this morning around 10:00. Well, the conditions were about like the British Open conditions with winds blowing about 40 MPH. I pulled a Greg Norman and got off to a hot start but couldn't finish down the stretch. In fact the last hole was maybe the worst throw of the day. 18 is along the road and is a dog leg right. The wind was blowing into our face and a little to the right (about the 5 o'clock position if 12 o'clock was straight down the fairway). I tried to throw a low hard shot that banked to the right. Well, it banked to the right alright, but didn't stay low in the least little bit. The wind caught it and blew it super high in the air and about 100 yards right of the fairway and landed 3 lanes over in the street! So there I was performing the shuttle run in the middle of busy traffic. I had to sprint to the frisbee to beat the traffic from the right, pick up the frisbee and sprint back to beat the traffic from the left. Of course I made it safely or you wouldn't be reading about it in my blog. Anyway, Kevin ended up beating me by one hole at $5 per hole. Somehow I got stuck with the entire bill at In-and-out burger to cover my $5 wager...what an angle shooter!

Today was another struggle with poker. I was never winning for one second in my session today. I lost a full buy-in almost immediately when I guy flopped a set of 4's against my AA and I never managed to get back in the positive. At one point I was down almost $1800, but I made a nice steady comeback to end the day at -$856. A couple of days ago I mentioned how few times I had gotten aces and how that was unlucky. Well, equally as unluckily today I had them 5 more times that I should have, but I ended up losing $538 with them. Once again...its gonna be tough to have a good day when it doesn't go your way with Aces. I feel like I played pretty well again today, but I think I have discovered another leak in my game. I really have to stop using instant messenger when I am playing. It definitely takes away some of my focus on poker and that can never be a good thing. What if it results in my running 1BB/100 lower than I should be? That is about $40/hour and over $40,ooo per year! Wow, it won't be very hard for me to quit using IM now that I just thought about that little stat. Bye bye instant messenger :( I'm still playing great poker and I look forward to busting some heads tomorrow.

After my little set back today this is how my week looks after 5 days:
26 hours played
+$1,939
Running at a sad 1.56 BB/100
played 12,889 hands.

Only two more days to get to my goal of 35 hours and $4,000 in profit. The hours will probably happen, but I will have to run pretty well to make it to the $4K...it is certainly possible though.

Well....that is just not how it was supposed to go down :(

2008-07-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

I had a really frustrating day of poker today. I started off great and I was up about $1,000 in the first 30 minutes. Then before I knew it I was stuck about $300 somehow, but I felt like I was still playing great. Since I felt good I decided to mix in one table of 5/10 and see how comfortable I felt there. I lost some smallish pots there and was only down about half a buy-in, but it just seems so much worse because it is more money than you are used to losing. I ended up making a few hands there and won about $400 in the 5/10. I am going to try to continue to add in 1 or 2 tables of the 5/10 when the games look good. Anyway, everything started turning around and all of the sudden I was up over $1800 when the following hand took place:

First of all, I know this player is a huge fish, because earlier I called her raise preflop with 44 and the flop came 224, she (her name was every1luvsjeni) bet the flop and I called, the turn was a 9 and she went all-in with 55 and I of course called and won. Then in the chat she says "nice suckout" as if it were some horrible bad beat I put on her since she had the best hand preflop and proceeded to put the rest of her money in when she was way behind. Anyway, I had position on her and somehow she had built her stack up to $1400 and I had her covered. She raised and I called with TT, the flop came AT7 with two hearts. She bet $57 and I min-raised her to 114. She thought for a second and just called. At this point I am fairly certain she has a big ace and I am going to win a huge pot as long as a heart doesn't hit the turn and kill my action. The turn is the Ace of diamonds and she checks to me. Since I already know she is a bad player I know there is no way she is ever folding if she has a a big Ace like I thought. We were both really deep so I wanted to try to get as much money in now as I could so I could make another big bet on the river. I decided to overbet the pot and made it $320 when the pot was only $285. She instantly went all-in for $1300! If she has 4 aces or aces full of tens she is just gonna have to bust me I suppose. I snap called and the river was the unfortunate 7 of clubs giving her Aces full of 7's. Its always tough losing a $2900 pot, but especially when it was about $1700 bigger than any other pot I played today and I was an 85% favorite when all the money went in.

That hand REALLY took the wind out of my sails and it immediately made me a little gun shy and fearful of going on tilt. I tried playing for a little longer since I had only been playing about 4 hours, but I just didn't feel like I could play my best right then since I didn't feel like being aggressive at all. I lost a few more pots and just decided that I would cut my session short before I let that one hand affect my play anymore. I also thought about how it could even affect my play tomorrow if I kept playing and ended up losing a bunch at the end of my session today. So I quit early and ended up winning $90 in almost 4.5 hours. That one hand could have really been a huge boost to an already successful week, but thats just the way it goes.

I have been playing my A-game all week and I look forward to doing it again tomorrow.

So far this is how my week looks:
18 hours
+$2794

I am off to the store to buy some ant killer. Since I got back from Cabo there have been a few random ants around the house. Today must be their party day though. There are a ton of them in the pantry feasting on some stray reese's peanut butter puffs on the floor. The worst part is that somehow a few ants have made it all the way back to my desk in my office. When I look at my desk I never see any ants, but then all of the sudden I will feel one crawling up my arm while I am playing! I kill it and go on since there aren't any more on my desk anywhere that I can see. An hour later another friend finds his way to arm again! Still none on my desk though. Anyway, I had about 4 ants appear out of nowhere and crawl up my arm today so I think it is time this gets taken care of.

Those ants are supposed to be crawling, but I can't get it to work right. They craw right when the page loads up, but they don't keep crawling. If you want to see them crawl, click refesh and scroll down really quick.

British Open coincidence.....

2008-07-19T01:24:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to point out that Nick and I are probably the first two roommates in the history of the world that have two really good college buddies that are on the PGA tour and happen to be paired together in the 3rd round of the British Open. Nick was college roommates with Kevin Stadler at USC. They are both +8 and tied for 38th. Good luck to both of them...especially Jeff.

Day 3 of 1-Week Challenge = Yay swings!

2008-07-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

Well, today started pretty crappy and got worse until at one point I was down about $2,000. I made a really good comeback and at one point I was up around $700 until I finally ended the day -$519. I believe I played pretty well today and did a really good job of staying aggressive and picking up small pots when no one showed much interest. To say the deck was stacked against me today would be a very accurate statement. I only got aces 5 times out of 2,458 hands and the most I ever won with them was $55. It will always be hard to have a winning day when things go like that for you with Aces, but to make up for my lack of aces though I got Kings 25 times and Queens 18 times. I should have had each of those pairs around 11 times. While it seems like a great thing that I got KK and QQ so much 3 of the times I had KK someone had AA and I lost over $1,000 with QQ today. All total I ended up losing $713 with AA, KK, and QQ today. That kind of makes me feel good though, because that means I was a winner today with all other hands combined.

One funny hand today that ended up going my way with KK when the other guy had AA:

This one guy seemed to have my number in every pot we played against each other. He had already stacked me for a full buy-in at $600 NL with his AA vs. my KK once about an hour ago before this hand came up. I raised in the cutoff with KK, he 3 bet me from the button, and I four bet to $160. He thought for a while and eventually went all-in and I was instantly sick to my stomach. I just knew he had Aces again, but I can never really fold here. Anyway, it was $240 more for me to call and I typed in the chat box "Well, Smurf (his name was Smurf fitt) if you are going to have AA everytime I get KK today you are just gonna have to get my money" and I called. He obviously had Aces, but I ended up making quad kings! It was just one of those days where people kept holding overpairs that were bigger than my overpairs. It was a pretty bad beat for him, but it actually seemed really fair to me, haha.

So now my week looks like this:
16.37 hours played
8,236 hands played
+$2,704
Running @ 4.00 BB/100

So even though I ended up losing a little bit today I think it was a productive day of poker considering the cards I was dealt. I'd prefer not to have the big swings that I had today as they can wear on your confidence a lot.

For your viewing pleasure....here is a picture math equation summing up my day of poker, enjoy:

YAY SWINGS!

Super nerdy stats stuff (this will bore most of you to tears so skip it)....

2008-07-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

After I wrote my last blog I was looking at my win rates and thinking about what I would have to do to raise them over long periods of time.

Here is what I came up with:

After 286,831 total hands in my database I am running at 2.44 BB/100 hands.
After 107,611 hands of 2/4 full ring NL I am running at 3.27 BB/100 hands.

If I want to be running at 4 BB/100 hands at 2/4 full ring NL after 200,000 hands I will have to run at 4.79BB/100 hands over my next 93,389 hands. If I am able to do this it would raise my hourly rate for playing $400 NL full ring from $100.59/hour to $137.73/hour. During those next 93,389 hands I would be making approximately $194.81/hour.

If I want to raise my total win rate to 3 BB/100 hands after 400,000 total hands I will have to run at 4.9 BB/100 hands over the next 113,169 hands. This is not an exact figure because of different limits being played, but if 2/4 NL is close to my average game it should be pretty close and I have no idea how to figure it exactly.

These are very lofty improvements, but they at least give me something to shoot for. It would probably take about 2.5 months with some pretty steady playing from me to get to these hand benchmarks. We'll see how it goes.

I'm sorry if you read all of this, because I know most of you have no idea what any of that crap means.

Day 2 of 1-week challenge.

2008-07-17T19:23:00.001-07:00

Today was a successful day of poker for me. I played 5.87 hours and won $909 which is about what I can expect to make playing 6-7 tables of full ring 2/4 NL (with a little bit of 3/6 mixed in). I am happy with the length of the sessions I have put in this week, but I am more happy that I think I might have found a leak in my game. I felt myself not playing as well at the end of my session as I was earlier in the day so I decided to quit playing. I have always been really good about quitting when I notice my focus or play starting to slip. I was up about $1600 and ended up losing about $700 in the last hour or so. When I quit playing I was disappointed that I had given some back from my peak because of poor play. Then I remembered that the exact same thing happened to me yesterday around the same point of my session when I went from $2900 winner to only $2300 winner within the last half hour of my session. This got me thinking so I went back and looked at the graphs from a bunch of sessions that I had that were 5 hours+. It didn't happen in all of them, but more often than not at the end of all of my long sessions I finished with a decent size downswing. There could be several causes for that too though. Maybe I am just more likely to quit during a losing stretch than I am a winning stretch, but I think it has more to do with me losing focus and playing poorly which causes me to quit. Sometimes I can still win money while lacking focus and playing poorly, but most of the time it will result in a downswing. So my conclusion is that somewhere around 5 hours is my threshold for playing my 100% A-Game totally focused poker when I am multi-tabling online. This has a strange correlation to the approximate amount of time that my adderall continues to work (its actually not strange at all and it probably the exact reason I only play well for 5 hours at a time).

Therefore, I am going to try something new where I set some type of timer to remind myself when 5 hours have elapsed and if I don't choose to quit right then I will at least be able to make a conscious effort to stay focused for a little while longer. If I continue to have poor results on days when I play longer than 5 hours I will start making myself quit once the 5 hours are up. I have often wondered if I would even be a winning player and/or play for a living without taking adderall. I probably COULD do it, but I think I would be pretty miserable and I would certainly be much less successful at it.

So far after two days of grinding it out towards a 35 hour week I have played 11.23 hours and I have made $3,224. If only I would have had my revelation before these last two days I would have played about an hour and a half less and be up about $1300 more! That is silly to think like that, but I suppose it is possible that I am costing myself that much money by playing sessions that are longer than I can stay focused. Right now, I am way ahead of my 35 hour/$4K week goals. I am actually on pace to play 39 hours and win $11,284. That is VERY unlikely, but don't be surprised if it happens...I feel like I am playing some really good NL right now by choosing better spots to put added pressure on the passive players.

Also, I am trying to decide what I will do with my $36,000 when Jeff wins the British Open this week. He is tied for 15th and only 3 shots back after the first day of play. Even though I had already made the bet without thinking about this....Eric reminded me how Jeff should certainly be used to playing in terrible weather. This is so true...Big 10 golfers are at a huge disadvantage because of the crappy weather they have to practice in during the fall, winter, and spring months....that is until you are playing in the British Open and everyone has to play in crappy weather :) 1 X Jeff...do it for me :)

Day 1 of 1-week challenge.....

2008-07-17T01:39:00.000-07:00

I got off to a great start of my 1-week challenge today. I ended up winning $2,315 and played a little over 5 hours. It is going to be really tough for me to play 35 hours in a week, but I am really going to try and make a run at it. I am sure I will already fall behind pace tomorrow, because Eric is in town for one day and we are playing golf tomorrow morning. I always have a hard time playing too many hours on days that I play golf too. 5 or 6 hours is about the most I can play in one day which means I have to play close to my max hours every day of the week to get to 35 hours. I was looking at my poker tracker for 2008 and figured out that I have averaged about 15 hours per week of playing hold'em online. That is totally disgusting. I know that doesn't include any live poker, online tournaments, or any time I have spent playing PLO, but I should still have more hours than that logged playing hold'em online. It is 2 am and we are leaving at 7:30 am for golf tomorrow so I have to get some shut eye.

In some other exciting stuff to keep an eye on....I bet $180 on Jeff to win the British Open at 200:1 in hopes of winning $36,000! I also bet $40 on J.B. Holmes, because I thought he was a good bet at 150:1. Maybe I should call Jeff and tell him he could win me $36K if he wins so he would try extra hard to win this time....as if he won't be trying to win the $2 million or whatever you get for himself, haha. (please don't call or text me to tell me how he is doing, because I will be watching it on tivo when I get home from playing tomorrow).

Back to business....

2008-07-16T09:36:00.001-07:00

I will write up a trip report soon, but for now I just want to get some goals written down. I can't make any goals that are too long term because I have some scheduled trips coming up so I will start with one for the up coming week.

Starting on 7/16 and ending on 7/22 I will play 35 hours and make $4,000. The hours played is more important to me than the money being made, but only because I know if I put in the hours the money will follow. Time to get to work!

I think my little vacation is serving its purpose....

2008-07-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

I usually take vacations when I get bored with poker and/or feel like I am not playing my best in hopes of regaining some motivation to play better and more poker while also enjoying it. It is really tough to win at poker when it feels like a grind or you are playing only because there is nothing else exciting to be done instead. As much as I love poker it does get a little boring if you don't take some breaks to keep yourself fresh. I have done plenty of lounging by the pool and just relaxing in general that I am starting to get back the itch to play some poker.

I have two scheduled trips coming up but besides those I hope to get in a lot of hours playing while I am in Vegas. My two upcoming trips are to Louisville in early August and to Evansville in early September. I am going to Louisville to play in Landon's member guest tournament if we get my GHIN handicap card situation squared away (it has been a pretty big hassle so far). My trip back to Evansville is for my 10 year high school reunion, which I am really looking forward to since I helped set it up and it will be full of my friends. I may stay a little longer in Louisville and take a trip to Landon's lake house. Hopefully we can arrange that Jon meet us down there for that. Who knows how long I will stay in Evansville...it could be just for 3 or 4 days or it could be for 2 or 3 weeks. A lot of that depends on the softball and PLO at aztar situations. I would love to fill in on some old pals softball teams while I am home since that is one the things I miss most about living in Vegas. If the PLO action is good it is always a great time and I like playing with that crowd.

I am typing this blog while laying out by the pool and some sweat is starting to run down my side. I think I will end this now, hop in the pool, and swim over to the swim up bar for a virgin Miami Vice.....half Strawberry Daquiri and half Pina Colada without the alcohol of course.