Phone Blog...

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 :)

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 :)

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...

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

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

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....

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.