It's been awhile...

I typed this about 2 weeks ago otw to san diego and LA...

Well, it sure has been a long while since I've shared my thoughts in a blog...

It's been so long I don't even know where to start, and since I'm on a plane, I don't even know where I left off last.

It's been quite the interesting last number of months. July was the wsop and getting all of the remodelling figured out for the new house while still living at Jon's. I was hoping to be moved in by the beginning of August but it Bill the contractor was taking his time on his terrible work. I was fed up at the end of august and decided to move in and just deal with the contruction pains and noise and maybe that would make him move faster.

I don't really feel like rehashing every last detail, but the gist is he did nothing but terrible work, his tile/stonework had to be scrapped and I had to hire a seperate contractor to redo the bathroom and entry way, and that took time to find and wait for their availability. They finished up a faaantastic job about 2 weeks ago and Bill was finishing up some of the plumbing in the bathroom when he decided to take the shower valve cap off without turning the main water line off. I heard it from my office and knew immediately what happened. I don't remember the last time I ran that fast. Down one flight of stairs...sprint, down another flight of stairs, sprint. Crank, crank crank crank omg hurry up turn off! Got it. As I go back to the main floor water is just pooooouring out of the canned lights. Towels. Every last one I could find. buckets/bins. Check. The new wood floor was not damaged, but the cieling on the main floor and the carpet in the master were. All said and done not some huuuge deal, but the last straw for mr bill. I should have fired him long before, but I guess I just put too much faith in people...and with all the delays just wanted stuff done so I could move on. This was too much. I had to fire him, and he took it just fine it seems. I probably paid for a little more than the services I recieved but I just want to move forward.

So, I've hired a new contractor and he's been finishing up. He'll be done soon and as soon as I pick out replacement carpet for my bedroom, I can actually live in it! Haha. I wouldn't even remotely care except for the woodpeckers that seem to like the front of my house and constantly wake me up. It's good they're on the wall that my bed is one because a good pounding and they're gone for a half hour. Haha.

My furnature has been delayed in addition to my disdain of all the detailed decorating involved in furnishing a house. I have a decorator helping me and she's been good, she's just a little on the over-creative side so I can't just trust her to do her own thing...

I've learned a lot about people and project management as well as being a responsible adult in the last number of months. I've lovvvved having the house to myself at night but 2 days ago was the first time somebody else hasn't been there during the day. It's not particularly annoying having people in your house working on things but it just gets tired after a while. I actually have to get dressed and stuff?!!?! WHAT? Haha. It's nice just being in charge of things and I've learned a lot of 'handiman' things of which were no interest to me b4 having my own house. I also like being able not deal with/address things when I don't want to. There is no mother or other roommates who have to suffer the consequences. I was the only one who got to care when I didn't have trash service for the first 2 weeks of living there. :)

I spent a couple weeks up north with my family and then michelles family in august so it was one of my lowest hour months in a couple years, yet the time I put in I ran well so I made a healthy amount which made relaxing away from life that much easier. September and October Michelle has been very busy with her masters program so in addition to the big twins push I've been playing a lot of poker with great results. EVen still, the long hours with the house stuff I think had me a little more stressed out than I like being. I bet the twins actually didn't help down the stretch. heh.

I just feel like I've really honed in on a place in poker where I can make great money (hu limit online) and I want to take advantage of it while the landscape is the way it is. Put some money in the bank so if something changes, even drastically I have time and resources to reestablish another method without giving up the lifestyle I've become accustom to. So this definitely means playing a little more than would be 'fun' but it's all about the fututure. If I wouldn't have played live/tournaments I'd be havinbg a really good year but unless something changes in the last 2 months, have to settle for a 'decent year' because I've just lost my ass live and haven't done anything in any tourneys. I guess in 2009 decent year is good as almost everyone in normal business is having a crappy year.


A friend and I started a business project a couple weeks ago that has some good possibility of being a good passive income generator. It's not a get rich type of thing but quite possibly a liveable enterprise. I have some ownership in a couple other companies and I'm just trying to touch more things with the hope that eventually all together they can cover living expenses. I don't plan on ever quitting poker, it'd just be nice to have some non poker income (obviously, lol).

I really wish turbulance on planes didn't affect me. I'm so jealous of those who just cruise through it like it's some fun ride. I had a hell of a time on the last flight from DET to CHI and then on to MSP. We had to fly through storms and it was missserable. The entire flight from chi to msp i just sat there with my head in my hands in my lap constantly looking at my watch hoping to be closer. Somehow, I've never thrown up on a commercial flight (but did on a small private plane when i was like 8) yet I feel like garbage a reasonable amount of the time I fly. It's mostly the decent that gets me and more than one in a day is almost always trouble...so I'm gonna start sucking it up and paying for the more expensive direct flights so I don't have to suffer. My thrify side just thinks it's dumb but it's getting the point after all the misery.

I've also decided I need to treat myself to another helicopter skiing day this winter. I just had so much fun 2 years ago and what's the point of all this work if I really don't do what I think is the most fun thing in the whole world every once in awhile. I'm really jonesing for a nice little ski trip and with the little snow we've gotten (that didn't stick) it has me really in the mood. The rainy crap we've had lately I can do without...nice weather or winter sounds better..haha.

remodelling, wsop

I'm really looking forward to getting back to my 'normal' life...Wake up between 9 and 2, work most of the standard working people day, see michelle or go do fun things like twins/wild games in the evening and more often than not work before going to bed. These days the afternoons are consumed with kitchen/house planning and it's getting a little old. It's really not my style of thing, but it's my house that I could live in for a very long time so I may as well try to do it right the first time and I just gotta suck it up and do it. It's just kind of overwhelming...buying a first house and then before moving in and even knowing really what I want, having 18 people asking me what I want for each and every detail of the remodelling process. The control I have over it is pretty cool but really I don't feel like I'm experienced enough to be making all these intricate decisions. My mom has been helping me and that's been really helpful, but really most of it's on my shoulders.

So the government decided to give me a small business/self employed census, tell me I somehow owe them $100.38 underpayment of 2008 estimated taxes, and decide that poker accounts are foreign bank accounts and have more forms to fill out...so while each of those things are very small to deal with, on top of the house shinnanigans add another layer of stress. I know I'm probably very spoiled and whining about those things is annoying to some people, but hey it's my blog I can whine if i want! Haha.

On an up note I'm on a plane with Michelle to Vegas for the world series of poker main event. I play on day 1c (sunday) and will potentially be here for a week and a half. If I get unlucky and bust out the first day I'll be back on wednesday and if not, whenever I bust out. We're seeing O tonight and I'm lookin forward to that. I'm also gonna teach her how to roll points for 45 minutes at craps and rack up the dollars. Haha.

Jay has been staying with me at Jons' the past week and that's been sweet to have him around...I know mary's with me. And she pwwwwwwned him. She got the valet in on telling him they backed into picketts car (which he's borrowing) so he was totally buggin out. :)

I think him and Dave Schnettler are spending the rest of July at my house after the wsop and I'm sure that'll be fun. I owe them for all the time they've put me up in San Diego. Hopefully the house remodelling wont be too annoying to us while we're there. About as soon as the house gets done it's Du Nord time! Kinda funny, but it'll def be a great break from everything and I hope to be fully settled by the time I come back so I can just be DONE. :)

I'll be posting wsop updates to my twitter (bicyclekick) if you want to follow my deep run you can.

and stuff

I've been very busy these days and definitely put blogging on the back burner. It also didn't help for blogging that in vegas I won $700 1 short session and otherwise lost every single other session. It was never a big number but bleed bleed bleed. I did manage to have more fun than usual though as I golfed twice, hung out with some great people I dont get to see very often, and found the 2 tournaments I played to actually be fun (vs the standard ughh why did I enter this tourney 6 hours into it). I think that has a lot to do with the structures which I find to be a million times better than any other live tourneys I've ever played and the limit tourney was 6max so a lot of action...very fun.

I close on the house in a week and it's been so busy because I've been working with a contractor and a kitchen remodeler to redo the kitchen and master bath before I move in. We've made some great progress and even though it stresses me out I'm really looking forward to the finished project.

I had a pretty good may for poker but it finished slugishly and june has been no different. I haven't been blowing my brains in overly, just on the negative side of the variance tree. Meh, so much else going on...I don't really have time to think too much about it and it's been lots of short sessions so I don't feel like I've really been tilting too much.

I'll try not to be such a stranger and you can also follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/bicyclekick. I dont put much there - mostly wsop stuff and I'll be updating it for the main event but I throw a bone every once in awhile. Haha.

house

They accepted my low re-counter offer!!!!! wooooo!

quick vegas update

I decided to join the twitter fad for updating on wsop stuff here in vegas so if you want to keep up to date with how i'm doing in the different tournaments you can find out at http://twitter.com/bicyclekick

I made the offer and got counter offered and re-counter offered on the house. I should know really soon.

house update!

I think I've found the house I'm going to buy! I'm suuuuuuuper excited. Not only is it really good it's the first house I haven't been able to find anything wrong that's not cosmetic and it's cheaper and better location than the rest too. I'm going to redo the kitchen and probably a few other cosmetic things but it's a really great house space wise! The yard is reallllly good too.

6am is gonna come too quick so I'm gonna try to unwind and get some sleep!

Camping etc

I feel like even though I'm doing mostly fun things that I'm constantly running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. I've been waking up to an alarm for the last month or so and I'm sure I'll get zero sympathy for that but isn't one of the perks of being a poker pro supposed to be lack of alarm in the morning?

The camping trip was a blast and could have been disasterous considering the rooftopper we had on top of the car flew off in reletively thick traffic while I was going 75mph. Everyone swerved properly and the state patrol was able to get it off the road and escort us off and tell us to get different and better straps at fleet farm. Only a few dents on my car and a 2 hour delay. Coulda been far worse.

The campsite was pretty cool, nice and wooded and we didn't have anyone overly close to us so sound wasn't an issue. We went hiking in a couple state parks and had some nice picnics and went to a winery and brewary. Also there was a really really sweet restaurant a calm bay on lake michigan that we had dinner one night and it was absolutely perfect. 70, sunny, and no wind. Very nice.

Nights were very very cold. Around 40 degrees...luckily we all brought hats and stuff so we all managed. We pulled the picnic table close to the fire and that helped a lot for playing cards. The first night I slept without a hat on and it was kinda annoying so the last 2 nights I slept with a hat on and it was much better. Now that I'm no longer a whipper snapper sleeping on the ground wasn't particularly thrilling. I got the best compact pad REI had, but next time I'm bringing an air matress lol. I woke up with a sore neck and back every day. Waaaaaaaaaah waaaah. :) I have a lot of respect for the people on survivor.

Since I felt like I was working a little too hard, I basically took a couple days off before my trip and then obviously didn't play on my trip, so that was really pleasant to have basically a week off. I'm back to playing 100/200 on my own action again and have won a little at that. I might chop more of the 6max action and take my own HU action because my edge is way bigger.

I skipped the twins game today cause of that running around with my head cut off feeling and then had my business meeting for 5pm get cancelled which actually kinda pissed me off cause I wanted to play tennis and also had originally planned on having my PA come over and help clean up the disaster I've made in my room and I cancelled her but she was able to come after all. I missed the tennis but I'll manage. I'm seeing a house at 8pm that I'm really hoping is great...as I'm getting a little antsy. My financial planner changed her recommendations about the housing market from do what you want to buy small as she thinks the upper housing market still hasn't been affected by the forclosures and they are going to come in the next couple years and if I bought one and wanted to move it'd be a lottt harder and there will also be good deals then to take advantage of if I do in fact want to 'settle down for sure' in one place for awhile. Seems to make sense to me...so this house is definitely underwhelming compared to some of the others I've looked at but it's location is great, it seems to have a pretty private back yard with woods behind it and deeded access to lake josephene.

Mike's friends who we're going on a golf trip this weekend must think getting up and atem early is the way to go, so they made tee times for like 11am 4 hours away for tomorrow, which means we have to be on the road by 6am. Brilliant imo. At least my sleep schedule is like 2am-10am so while it'll be brutal, it could be worse. I think i'm going to vegas next wednesday. This is contigent to me not feeling overwhelmed and also not having house stuff I have to take care of.

Michelle has been quite the supportive awesome gf these days and I feel like I should give her some extra public credit.

Twins seats

Here are our new twins seats. It's sweet that they're the same price ($50) as our current seats! blogspot is dumb and cuts the images off but you can click to see the full image.

thoughts

I had one of those shooting the shit for a few minutes in passing conversations turn into a 3 hour conversation with my roommate Jon tonight. What a conversation it was. It mostly didn't have anything to do with me, but even the parts that didn't made me realize I'm working too hard. It's too easy for me to work at all times of the day so it's always hanging over my head. I could always be making a lot of money for an hour of my time. This isn't fair to me with how I've handled it. I understand why I did for awhile as I was very motivated to make a bunch of money to make the house buying process more stress free as I lost some money when I pushed it, but now that I've gotten back on track, it's time to stop. I like never take full days off. I'm going to try taking sundays off for awhile. I'm sure there will be a rare sunday here and there where I want to play tournies and I'll take monday off, but I'm going to try this at least through June and see how it goes. This seems super "no duh" and easy and ridiculous to most people I'm sure, but I with my drive to put in 40 hours per week (which I've averaged over this year), it really hangs over my head. I guess that sounds like I'm addicted or have some sort of gambling addiction, but it's really not like that or about that. I've pretty much cut most of the gambling limits and what not out of my play, so it's mostly just 'work'. I'm not looking for the winning excitement when I sit down most days. It sure is fun to win and go on rushes, but really in the end I really just want the dollars with the least stressful route.

A friend messaged me and said I should append to this a little bit about how stressful playing online poker for a living really is. Like playing 3-4 tables of lhe for 4 hours is really really mentally taxing. I'd put it on par with taking a test in college as far as how much it takes out of you. I know a lot of people in other jobs feel the pressure and this isn't to take away from them, it's just that most people don't TRULY understand what it takes to do what we do. It's draining.

A number of us bought tennis rackets a couple of days ago and we've played twice and are playing again tomorrow afternoon. I like it just like raquetball except it's maybe better cause you get to be outside and get some sun also. We picked our wild season ticket seats for next year and they are section 115 like row 20 (map here) which is on the wild shoot twice side so we are ridiculously thrilled at how lucky we got. The next best seats were in the corner 2 rows from the top. We pick our twins tickets tomorrow and there are perhaps 10 seats left of what we want (good seats behind home plate that aren't under the overhang) so it's going to be down to the wire. CMONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN one time.

I'm really looking forward to the camping trip this weekend and had fun stocking up on all the goodies at REI this afternoon. I figured it was time to replace my 20 year old sleeping bag as well as pick up a nice sleeping pad. I'm a little bitch, it's true. :)

A little late

Sorry about the lack of updates...been busier than normal lately.

The twins game where they won 14-10 in the 13th inning was definitely the game of the year...unreal and super fun to be at. The day game the day after I skipped (i skip most day games...but next year outside they'll be funnnnn) was a pretty cool game too.

Poker...I haven't had this good of a start to a month, let alone this good of a month if it ended today in like 8 months so I'm pretty pumped about that. I'm playin real good and running real good also of course. Positive variance is fun! Hopefully this will propel me into having a sweet world series! I've been playing a lot too...and really noticed a biggg difference between the games from 11pm-5am vs the 11am-5pm so my sleep schedule is an annoying 6am-2pm but it comes with the territory. The games are just that much better lately.

I've been lookin at a couple houses again and there is one I want to see on turtle lake that looks pretty good but the selling agent forgot to tell them I wanted to see it and they were having people over for dinner so I couldn't see it! I couldn't see it on monday either for the same reason but that was a last minute call so it's understandable.

Next weekend a few of us are going camping in Door County Wisconsin...camping is one of those things you always talk about doing then very rarely actually do it...I'm pumped it's happening! The weekend after I'm going with a buddies friends to northern bay which is also in WI for a golf weekend. And 3 weekends from now it's vegas for the WSOP. It seems like everyone is going to be there that weekend so I'm really lookin forward to it.

I'm off to get ready for an Owl City concert now...

Cali, May

Cali wrapped up nicely. My own poker was pretty snore but I had a piece of jay in a couple games and he won me some good money. Adding his into mine I think I ended up around 30k. A pretty solid week and a half work trip if you ask me! Golfing didn't really happen as much as I had wanted, but I did get out yesterday and also hit balls today.

I've been going to a lot of twins games and running aces the past 2 nights. I've also been tryin to make up for lost time with michelle, who got accepted to grad school at the U today, so we're really excited about that! I'm gonna join up with her beer drinking I mean kickball team tomorrow and I'm looking forward to that too.

Poker in may has been nothing but fantastic and it was capped off tonight by crushing some guy at 1/2. Jay gets half and I'm happy to give some back for his crushing while I was in SD. I'm feelin pretty brainfrizzled now so I'm gonna quit for the night and hop in bed and enjoy some TV or a movie.

MN gambling law proposition

I'm going to take my last blog post down because I made it before I was fully informed. Here is the deal in my oppinion now that it's been a few days:

Nothing is going to happen. Maybe for a couple days a few ISP's will comply, but it will be fought hard in court and isn't likely to stand. I'm not nervous at all really. It's pretty ridiculous they are trying to censor information on the internet. Another interesting thing is a number of companies on the list of 'banned sites' do not allow US customers so they are trying to block free speach. Is this the american govt or the chinese govt? Seriously.

LA wrap up and on to SD

Day 4 was a real short day as like I said in my last post we were headed to bob and kirby's for a night off. I ended up picking up about $2000 in 5 hours. It was a bad $100/200 game and a great day to take a break.

On day 5 I spent the afternoon at the pool playing online and put my name on the $100/200 list at 4:45pm. I got in a $10/20 no limit game around 7 and played that for a little bit until finally getting my 1/2 seat at about 845. Frustrating. I was planning on going to SD the next day (saturday) but I ran into a couple friends who happened to be going back to SD themselves later that night so I caught a ride with them...which led to only getting to play 1/2 for about an hour. Thanks to sean and then chris for the rides! I won 800 at 10/20 nl and lost 2100 at 1/2.

Final totals for live poker:
41 hours
+$15,200

Running total for online poker
15 hours
+3,000

It was definitely a weird and pleasant live poker trip as the swings were really low and I didn't ever have one of "those sessions" where you're just stuck your ass (losing a lot) and it's kinda miserable. I did blow that 12k win back to 2k one day but that's standard at $200/400.

I was able to fit a round of golf in yesterday afternoon which was unexpected and awesome. It was my first 18 of the year and we played a kinda tough course. I was hitting the ball well but definitely had some rust and shot a 95 which with the course difficulty seems not so bad.

We're headed to the Padres game now and then gonna work online the rest of the day I think.

LA day 3: jump around

Usually when I play poker here I'll play longer sessions because the games are great and I'm here to work. This trip, the good white chip($100) games have been really spotty so they really break my sessions up. Like yesterday I was playing $100/200 for about 2 hours when a rich guy walked in and wanted to play $200/400. So a handful of us quit 1/2 and headed over to give him some action. Usually there are no time restraints, but apparently this guy is a real hit and runner so CC and Ly made an agreement with him that everyone who played had to play for 2 hours and couldn't quit unless they were losing. This seems a little forced and odd, but when you have to quit another game and likely wont get back into it any time soon because there are plenty of people waiting to play it along with this guy being notorious for very short sessions, it makes sense.

Just on cue after 2 hours he racked up his couple thousand dollar win and jetted. I played a few more rounds out of courtesy and in case he changed his mind, but without him the game was pretty bad and we had started drinking wine so it was time to go back to 1/2.

I did end up sitting outside by the pool in the afternoon to try to get a little color...but especially with being so white right now I didn't want to push it and end up bright red so I went in after 40 minutes figuring I'd pick up a little color but really I can't tell any difference. So today I was going to spend more time out there but it's cloudy! I didn't know they had such things in cali. :(

There's this mean woman here and a dealer was being unlucky for her and she started calling him "fucking VC" and he flipped out on her and called the floor over. She tried and sorta did play it off and he got over it, but it was still inappropriate and awkward. She also got into a big yelling/swearing thing with a Lebanese guy where she kept calling him asshat or something and he went off saying "don't call me asshat fucking beach. fucking beach. fucking beach dont call me asshat! Don't disrespect me like that!" Back in MN you'd get kicked out for a day for antics like that but here the floor man will just come over and say cmon guys lets just not talk to eachother and play cards. Even the 2nd time it happens. They aren't in the business of throwing people out.

In my 4 2-2.5 hour sessions (8.75h total) I ended up +5100 for the day yesterday.
Running total 32.25 hours + $12,800

Nice to be up like that but it could definitely change drastically real quick so I'm not gonna think about it too much.

I haven't thought about this hand that much since I played it but now I'm going to. I definitely played it differently than I usually would and I haven't decided for sure if there's merit in it yet.

Greg posts a dead blind in the co and it's folded to him and he raises. Everyone folds to me and I call with 98s. I've played greg very strong for years and he used to be a fit or fold kind of guy but he plays lot tougher and better these days and and has been showing down a lot more vs me lately. I've also ran good vs him and that helps.

The flop comes Q86 with 2spades. I have the 9s. I check call.

The turn is a 5d making 2 diamonds. I check raise and he calls.

The river is a 7h and I bet and he folds. Obviously the hand is less interesting when I make a straight, but that's part of the reason I like my turn check-raise. I think I have pretty good made-hand strength already and just in case I have straight outs and more than likely 2 pair outs. I almost never check-call check-raise as I think that's often a terrible line that only fish take, but this board texture and this history made it seem like a line to mix in.

Schneider and I always play hands ridiculously strong vs each other and never make folds so yesterday I decided it was time to lay a hand down. He raised utg 5 or 6 handed and I 3 bet it. The rich guy called 2 in the sb and mike called.

The flop came K75 with 2 clubs.

They both checked, I bet, sb folded, schneids called.

The turn was a 2d putting 2 diamonds out there.

He check raised me and I 3 bet. He called.

The river was an ace of clubs.

He bet out.

I painstakingly threw my cards away. I haven't talked to him about the hand yet but I really hope I didn't get pwned... :)

Time to head down to get a few hours in. A few of us are heading over to bob and kirby's place for a little grillin/beers and modified monopoly.

LA day 3: too tired

I did win some more today but I'm far too tired to write up about it so I'm just going to wait until tomorrow.

LA poker day 2...$39 at a time

This will be a short one cause there really weren't any interesting hands or things to talk about. I woke up around 1 and got my name on the list around 230 (what happens when there are no seats avail in the game) and got called for the game at 430. I played a little online in the meantime and it was bad to me as it's been the last few very short sessions.

I started in a must move $100/200 game with mike schneider and CC. It started getting more filled after an hour or two and Frank Mariani (LA Lakers owner) joined our game so we made it $200/400. I played that for a few hours and was up 12k at point but lost like 4 straight hands to Max down to 2k winner so I took a break and went up to my room to screw around on the internet. Any time a player like max wins a bunch of pots straight like that he really gains a nice psychological edge on you and the game. I get this way too people too but Max is a step better for sure...so with him having position on me it seemed like a good time to break and after taking a good hour and a half break I came back down and just didn't feel like gamblin. So I racked up, ordered a beer and found a $40/80 game.

What a bunch of nits they were. I raised like 50% of my hands and won the blinds most of the time. It would be $40 but at the 40/80 game the house takes a dollar no matter what every hand so it was $39 hand after hand. It was really relaxing and I rushed up for a bit but lost a bit back and quit around 12:30am up like $1400.

today: 7.5 hours + $4100
running total: 23.5 hours + $7800

Probably gonna play online for a little while here then finish watching the celebrity apprentice. Tomorrow afternoon I feel like sitting at the pool with my laptop or a book may be in order. Thursday I'm going over to pokerbob and kirby's house for a little grillin and a monopoly variant. While the games have been good enough, they just aren't slave away for countless hours at games so I'm gonna work a little less hard this trip it looks like. It's probably good for me anyhow. I'm just really looking forward to golfing in san diego.

LA day 1 wrapup

Day 1 ended much stronger than it began with that jackhammer start. I got down to the poker room and couldn't find a limit game and they were starting a new $10/20 blind no limit game so I hopped in and per the recommendation of a couple of people I bought in on the shorter side at $1500. I played for about a half hour when I got called for the $100/200 limit game when I was on the big blind with 54 of diamonds. The flop came Q76 with 2 diamonds. I led and got raised, I re-raised and he went all in and I called and he had a set and I didn't improve. So I move to limit...

The game was kinda crappy for quite a while...pretty much all pros, some of them not particularly good but they are not real fishy or anything. A couple OK guys. After not tooooo long I got moved to the main game which was pretty darn good. There was a guy in it who had been up for 3 days straight. I got to witness something new...a player falling asleep mid hand. He called the flop and then when his opponent bet the turn 10 seconds later he was sleeping and had to be poked awake. Lol. Dude. Go to bed. At around 11pm I was starting to feel a little fatigued myself so I planned on quitting when he did as he had racked up but I kept winning pots and he kept on playin. I try to play longer when I'm winning and shorter when I'm losin and while I was feeling a little tired, I was still with the program. I quit around 2am because I made a lazy play and it just seemed like enough and a good time to quit.

I ended up losing that $1500 in the no limit game but picked up a little over $11,000 in the $100/200 game so I won around $9800 on the day in about 13 hours.

running total:
16 hours
+$3700


A couple of the more 'interesting' hands:

Hand 1:
The fishy sleepy player grabs some chips to limp and then notices a few people behind him have folded so grabs another 4 and raises. I 3 bet with A8s and he calls. The flop is q54 rainbow and he check calls. The turn is the K of spades and he check calls. The river is the J of diamonds and he checks and I bet and I think this is one of those spots that if you don't play much live you will give off the wrong signals and get called here more often than somebody who is comfortable live. He almost surely as a pair by this point and while the board is helping you get a fold, betting in a believable manner is important. He ended up folding with a little 'darnit that board sucks' demeanor and I picked up the pot.

I had a good amount of history leading up to hand 2. The player in question is a long time pro. We haven't played TONS of hours together, but enough for me to know his basic operating procedure. He plays pretty straightforward and waits until the turn with his strongest hands. He's been 3 betting me a reasonable amount because he's 2 seats to my left and I've been missing the shit out of the flops so pretty much been folding until this hand where I had KQo and raised utg+1. He 3 bet 2 spots later and everyone else folded. I called. The flop came Q73 with 2 diamonds. I check raised and he 3 bet. I've seen him wait until the turn so many times with his big hands and he seems like the type who 3 bets that kind of flop with a weaker range than not so I 4 bet and he quickly 5 bet and I said oh ok see you at the showdown buddy in my head. The turn was a jack of spades and I checked and he checked. Heh. Nice 5 bet for a 'free' card. The river was an 8 of clubs and I bet and he called, i showed and he mucked.

That same player (from hand 2) kind of owned me in hand 3. I raised the button with AJs and a tight ok player called in the small blind. He 3 bet out of the bb and I capped it. The flop was AT3 with 2 diamonds. sb checked, he bet, I raised, sb folded, he 3bet, I called.

The turn and river were bricks and he bet it down and I called and he showed AQ. Against a lot of internet players that would be very standard, but this guy's range just felt a lot stronger but he definitely felt I was a little nuts so I just couldn't find a fold. Owell.


Time to watch some more season 2 of the wire...

LA day 1 great start

Nothing like waking up to a jackhammer in the morning. :( I was all pumped to sleep my little heart out as I haven't really been able to lately but the commerce is doing construction. I'll have to try to get to bed a little earlier tonight maybe and cross my fingers on tomorrow.

Time to shower and head down to 'work'. I'll update later.

LA day .5 trip report

Well i guess it coulda started worse, but not a whole lot in 3 hours. The $100/200 game was full when we got here so we hopped in the $60/120 game and it was a peach. I started out ok and got called for 1/2 but the 60 game seemed infinitely better so I decided to stay there. I don't think I won a pot after that decision and ended up losing $6100 in the 3 hours I played.

The only interesting hand was one I played was one where I raised 54s on the button and just the bb called. The flop came J92 with 2 spades and he check called.

The turn was a 6 of hearts and he check called.

The river paired the 9 and he bet real quick...too quick to have a 9 and it just felt like he was almost prepaired to bet the river so I snapped out a raise and he called without much pain with ace king and dragged the pot.

Whoops. 'Good' read, get owned. :)

The rest of the hands were just standard losing pots. Enough for one night but I'm not discouraged yet. I'm gonna sleep now and up and at em in the mornin.

Cali here I come

What do I always do when I'm in the middle of packing and don't feel like finishing? Write a blog obviously. Schneider and I are off to LA tonight for some pokering and when we're done with that gonna pop down to SD to visit the boys. I've been kinda itchin to go somewhere and when spring allergies rolled into full effect last week I just had to figure out where. If I had somebody to take a golf trip with I woulda just done that but I have clubs in SD too so I'll just mash out a bunch of rounds when I'm there.

Speaking of golf I made it out for the first time a couple days ago...just a little par 30 9 hole course by my house. I shot 5 over and was striking the ball well so I was very pleased. Putting has always been the worst part of my game so I decided this year to try something new that I've seen others do...line up the line on the golf ball with the line I want to take so when I am standing over it ready to hit all I have to think about is how hard to hit it as I've already got the line picked out. I'm sure I ran a little good but I 1 putted like 4 or 5 times. I also had my shortest put for eagle - somewhere around 15 feet with a nice break but it wasn't to be but I picked up a nice birdy.

The twins have been really fun to be at. I was at the big comeback game as well as finally a relaxing victory the next night. I wasn't able to go this afternoon as there was a birthday party for michelles grandma but I wasn't disappointed as I've been to plenty and day games are dumb indoors.

I plan on just playing $100/200 while out there and maybe a little $200/400 if the game is good, but I don't think I have the mental bankroll to play anything bigger as I don't wanna leave there again with the same feeling I had last time. It's just not worth it. I'm not sure if people are interested, but maybe I'll give a daily trip report or something if I'm feeling it. I'll try to remember some hands, too.

I know I have a bunch more little topics I could write about but I wanna finish packing so I can actually feel more relaxed.

shaking my head

All I can do this afternoon is shake my head. Yesterday afternoon I only got to play an hour because i had to meet up with my tax accountant. I could not blow a pot. I won every hand for that hour and it was too bad I had to go. Today is the exact opposite. I just have to watch every pot go the other way and all I can do is shake my head, over and over. I really bet that the reason limit holdem is a good game that will last the test of time is because sessions and runs like these are very common. People can be fooled about their skill level (good or bad) for a very long time and the rushes are so fun and people get hooked on trying to get on another one.

I did get to the driving range/practice green for the first time all year. Pathetic. Like out of this world pathetic. I just hope it was a fluke. I hit my first 6 or 7 balls terribly. I don't think it helps we were hitting off dirt but still, it wasn't good. I was putting better than average and my chipping could use a little practice.

I'm not going to bash my head against the wall with poker, that doesn't sound fun. It feels kinda silly to play racquetball when it's so nice out, but I could use that workout and setting up something like badminton sounds like too much work. haha. May as well let jon's grass get a little healthier too. Hopefully the twins will pulll off another win tonight...I'm slackin at 1-2 at games I've been at this year.

RB time...

taxes, game night

The thought of doing taxes makes me cringe so it's no surprise I let them go until the last minute. I got some of the prelim stuff done last week and had a meeting with my tax advisor but needed to get her more info (like how I made $.76 in interest on my like 4 shares of ecolab I had when I was a kid. I really should tidy up all my different accounts some day so I don't have to dig so much when tax day comes. I also get tons of statements and crap in the mail. Such a waste (of paper, the company who has to send them, mail system, and my time dealing with all of it.) I have all my main accounts on paperless statements but the ones i don't interact with much are still sending me paper.

I'm going to end up owing less than I remembered my financial planner planning out for me to owe so I'm pretty pleased about that.

We had some people over for an old fashioned board game night last night. Man I love game nights. We played apples to apples, taboo, and a little bit of bananagrams. It's no surprise I play so much poker and enjoy it more than most...I just love playing games!

I played the $109 SCOOP main event on stars today which had 18 thousand people. I lasted quite awhile before getting screwed out 1745th which paid $224! Ship it!!! Haha. They got my ass at the cash games a little today tho. Meh. I haven't decided if it's relax time or work some more. May as well check out the games and have them make my decision.

friday night ganger

I just quit a sick 4 hour session where at one point I got up to 4 $50/100 6max and 2 $30/60 6max's because the games were so good. I had a guy at heads up too but quickly quit him as it was very hectic and very stressful as I usually feel the most comfortable playing 2-4 tables. After losing a lot of the days to start April I pulled out a nice $16k (and 260 bet) winner today to bring me into the black on the month. The 16k winning days just feel so much better these days without the big games. I used to be kinda numb to those cause I'd be losing that much a lot too, but I don't think I've lost more than 10 in a day since I gave up games bigger than 50/100 almost 2 months ago so it's nice. Poker is so dumb as I didn't play any better/different than any other days this month and I couldn't win and now it comes in a big wave. The games were a little better but they've been good otherwise, too.

The wild game tonight was a really fun time. You could tell they really wanted it and an 8-4 hockey game is always great. It was sad to find out afterwods Annaheim won and we were out, but it's been a fun season and we got to care all the way down the wire and just like I said for the twins, if I'm still going to games in september because they're in it, I see the season as fine. Obviously I want playoffs, but just having something to hope for for awhile is fun.

I was able to talk to our season ticket agent about getting the right behind home plate tickets for a game this past week so 6 of us went and sat 2nd (and then 1st from like the 7th inning on) behind home plate right over the visitors on deck circle. Heckling those guys is really fun. :) Afterwords we went up to running aces for a 10/20 HOE game which after not too long turned into holdem cause those other games are slow and too much thinking haha. I'm thinkin about a quick little Utah ski trip next week and if they have openings another heli-skiing adventure. If not, the other sticks are coming out and it'll be time to start golfin.

I don't feel like blahblahblahing anymore. I'm off to bed.

ape rill

I've been pretty busy lately and meaning to update this but it always gets put on the back burner. I've got my taxes mostly done (maybe another hour or two of work). Poker has been pretty dumb in april. Twins are starting and I'm excited! Wild are finishing... :( That's the short version of blog. Haha.

A buddy and I started a little project which will probably turn into a business project soon enough. I'm kinda pumped about it and it's computer/software related and it was fun and interesting to plan it. I felt like I was back in college and maybe I will get to directly use my computer science knowledge after all! ;p

As cold and as brutal as it was walking to/from the twins game last night (in short sleeves), I wish the game was played outside...at least then you can dress for the occaision.

Bizot and I have been playing a ton of raquetball lately and if I bust out of this tourney in the next half hour or so aare going to play again today. It's really fun and a great workout, so the best of all worlds.

Well, so much for the tourney I just lost AK to AQ all in pre-flop. Fantasticly played by the AQ. lol owell. At least I get to play RB now...which I'm off to do...

fogodeguy

Since Jay was in town we decided to do a little 'get spiffed up and have a nice dinner and stay downtown' double date with him and Mary. We decided on Murray's steak house and hotel ivy.

Dinner was cruising along smoothly when towards the end of our entre portion the waitress was trying to clean up the table and projectile spilled my entire glass of red wine all over me. I was wearing a blue shirt and black dress pants...luckily I had taken off my coat. The whole table burst out laughing and I'm not a very angry person so I just had to play it down, as the waitress felt worse than I've like ever seen somebody feel. I also didn't want to be a crabaple on a good night, but deep down it was a little frustrating.

They boss gave me 15 cash and a card to call if dry cleaning cant get it out and they'll buy me a new shirt. I highly doubt they'll be able to. We'll see. I'm not to worried it wasn't like one of my favorite shirts or anything.

Hotel Ivy was fine. Given there are plenty of other options I would probably try a few others before/if i went back. I wouldn't say it was bad by any means, we just weren't that pleased. The small ammount of service we got was pretty good though, and I heard it's known for it's spa which we didn't use.

I ventured back to canterbury for the first time since october with all the boys for a nice fun long session on sunday. It definitely brought back some nostalgia and it was also nice to see a number of people I haven't seen in awhile.

Tonight we had a quadruple date where we (me, michelle, jay, mary, pickett, lindsey, dave p, and reily) went to fogodechau. I enjoy that place...and more as an experience than out of this world food. It's good food, for darn sure, and it's nice to get so many different types of meet, but it doesn't quite compare to a top steak house steak. All the girls were in for going to RA after for a little fun game poker but 3 of 4 of them have to get up b4 7 so we decided a little bowling and games across the street at gameworks would be a better idea. It was for sure.

The place was a ghost town and felt like they've kinda given up on trying. I can't really blame them as the block E area just feels really ghetto and I've been a part of some sketchy bullshit as well as heard of plenty so it's not exactly where most people want to go.

Tomorrow should be another sweet day as we're having a little boys night where 8 of us are going to an early dinner and then the wild game. Like pretty much all of the remaining games it's a must win game so there will be some good energy there and it'll be much fun.

I know I missed talking about something I wanted to talk about but the fact I wrote a blog at all given how tired I am after a great longish session is satisfying enough for now. I'm going to bed.

cider house rules

Michelle and I walked to a coffee house by her house tonight to get a hot cider because it felt winterish and after buying it the woman there said they were on a break from the concert thingy that some lady was putting on and if we wanted to stay we had to pay the 14 dollar cover. Maybe I'm just out of touch, but some rinky dink lady playin guitar at a rinky dink coffee house charging 14 bucks made me kinda chuckle. It must not have seemed overly weird to the 20-25 people who turned out (and maybe I'm the one out of touch, i'm not fully sure) but I thought most of the time coffee house music was like hey I like playing music I'll have my case open and you can put tips/donations in and I'm sellin my cd if you like my(our) music and want to support us.

We went back and played some gin with the basketball games on in the background and she had no trouble beating me pretty handily. I somehow have missouri going to the final 4 so that upset tonight was very awesome tonight, as was nova beating duke. I'm on top of my pool and leading schneider and hopp in our sidebets so I'm feeling good, but there is so much left and so much can happen.

I'm probably just a little whiner here, but I find having to take my car into the dealership to get the standard oil change/tuneup crap tedious and time wasting. It rarely is done as fast as they say and I find my self in major limbo running around trying to find other things to do.

April is going to the month of appointments. I already have a dermatologist apt, I also have to see the dentist, my financial planner, my tax accountant, and find a personal trainer to whip my butt into shape. I thought poker meant I didn't have to have a lot of crap on your schedule, lol. I think Shneider may have found a new PA to help me keep my life in order. I'm really hoping it works out well.

It's also my birthday on the 9th and the end of the wild/postseason as well as twins starting up. I gotta get out swinging the golfclubs, too, and still try to fit one more ski trip in. We're talking tahoe as we've always talked about wanting to go there and apparently it's like the best spring skiing anywhere and our vail pass works at heavenly, too.

And I was supposed to have a big poker goal of playing another 40-50k hands (I'm at about 45k hands with a few days left in march) And I gotta do my taxes, too. Probably about 8 hours worth of work I won't be able to spend playing poker. Looks like in reality I'll get in like 10 hands all month, haha. But I'll be having a great time. I'm ready for spring and summer. Lemme skip the spring allergies though.

I have a rule

For some reason I'm not finding this easy to explain as it just feels wordy any way I type it, so I think I just have to roll with it. When I'm playing a guy heads up and decide that he plays good enough and I don't want to play him again, I tell him I don't want to play him anymore and good game and good luck. If he sits with me again, I'll play both my button and give him his button and say please dont sit with me again, I don't want to play with you. If he sits a third time, I play my button and quit. Most people get the hint as they know how advantageous it is to be the guy on the button and they aren't getting the reciprication of being able to play their button. Over the last year on the button I make .08 of a bet per hand wheras in the big blind I lose .02 of a bet.

Yesterday I was playing and decided I didn't want to play a guy. I went through the motions and on the third time I grimmed his ass (the term in the poker world for playing your button and quitting). I left the table and sat at a new one. He joined and I did it again. And again. And again. On the 11th time he said man you're hard to play, always switching tables. lol. Finally after the 12th time he left never to be seen again.

I'm not like all super proud about all of this as it's a little bit douchey but it's one way you can stand up for yourself when somebody else is being an ass and it was making me laugh. I just thought it was funny he came back 12 times. Previously I've never had more than like 2 or 3 times.

I played raquetball today and very dumbly wore ankle socks that are lower than my basketball shoes so mid-first-game I had to go put my brutal street shoes on to play more as my other shoes were rubbing the shit out of my ankle.

I really enjoyed the nicer weather and it looks like the rain and semi-cold is here to stay for a bit. Kinda tough to have a nice little taste of spring/summer and then get it swiped away. Although the rain wasn't cold today and kinda made me feel like it was summer.

I've only put in 2 hours of poker today and I haven't really decided if I'm going to mash out another 3-6 hours after this blog. I'll probably look at the games and if they're good, play and see how I feel. I feel like I might have shorter patience than a lot of times so it might not last. The AP jackpot is up to 733k so I may just open up 10 tables of low no limit and try to win me a piece if I'm not feelin it.

sunday sunday sunday

The Wild are really under the gun with their season so when edmonton came to town today it was about as close to a must win game as you can get without 100% being so. Finally the crowd seemed to realize and appreciate this as the enviroment finally had a buzzed feel to it. The last bunch of games have felt pretty tame and has been kinda shocking because it was a super cool atmosphere last year downt he stretch.

Schneider and pickett were talking and realized the 4 ticket holders have been to 1 or 2 games together as a complete group. One or more of us has pretty much always been travelling...and lol pickett was gone for 6 weeks...but it's worked out great. One of our cupholders broke on the 2nd or 3rd game of the year and finally 2 games ago we told them about it. It wasn't fixed today. So this is how are seats are...

seat 1 is not a bad seat, it generally has somebody on your left but it's normal spacing. Seat 2 is a middle seat so definitely more desireable but it doesn't have a cup holder so beer drinking/not spilling is always an additional concern. Seat 3 is the best seat...it's in the middle and has all of the proper amenities. Seat 4 is by far the worst. While it has a place to put your beer to get warm (cough bizot) the seat is not parallel with the seat to it's right as we are in the corner. It's especially brutal when there is a full size male sitting in the adjacent seat as there is negative leg room.

Speaking of seats, some season ticket holder since 1961 cancelled their twins season tickets in the first row behind the screen behind home plate so the twins decided to offer 8 game packages to the first 10 current season ticket holders to respond and we were able to snag them. I don't know which games we have them for yet, but I'm pumped either way.

Watchmen last night was fine. It was entertaining I guess. I dont really have any strong oppinions about it, except that the imax had the sound a couple notches too high so a few of the scenes bugged me just because it was piercingly loud for no reason.

I was planning on getting in some work after the movie but a game of risk broke out. I used to play it a reasonable amount as a kid, but in the last 15 years I've played it less than 5 times for sure. The last time I played a couple months ago I rolled super bad early and lost real quickly and there was another guy there (dan) who constantly wins so a little pitty for me last time and a couple people spending their time attacking dan allowed me to build up my armies quietly and eventually run the board. It was obviously fun to win, but really now I think it's not a very good social/fun weekend night game. It should be reserved for cabins and stuff like that. Otherwise a good game of taboo or cranium or something is probably more fun for a group.

I was wide awake when the game finished around 1, so I checked out the games and they were ridiculously good so I played until like 5. They were still decent enough then but I didn't want to stay up toooooooooo late so I called it. I started falling asleep at about 545 while watching tv but when I went to turn it off i somehow woke up major. I tossed and turned for a half hour b4 turning the tv back on and finally falling asleep around 730. Doh. I shoulda just worked longer.

I'm suprised I'm not more tired now. I was only able to get 5 hours of sleep cause of the wild and afterwords got in a good 9.5 hour work session that was broken up by going for a run with jon.

I really hope the games don't change too much from what they are right now. Man, if I could put them in a bottle and hold onto them for the rest of my life I sure would. It's not that easy to get great heads up action anymore but being able to find a couple good 15/30-50/100 6max games is almost always easy. Sometimes are obviously better than others, but only a few times in the past few weeks have I decided not to play cause the games weren't good.

Heh, I just was gonna write out a quick one cause I said I'd blog more and it turned into a novel. I cracked a beer at the end of my session and sipping on that and typing this up has been ridiculously relaxing. Probably find something to watch on tv to additionally unwind my brain and get to sleep before it gets too late again.

Finally an update...and more to come soon.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Going forward I'm going to try to make a good point to update a lot more often.

The Utah ski trip was probably my favorite ski trip of all time. At least top 2 or 3 for sure. We got tons of snow, got to ski tons of sick runs with tons of snow, and a lot of really awesome guys were there. Most trips have 2-4 people, this one had 7 and enjoying the best skiing with 6 sweet guys is a really fun time. Only thing that coulda really made it better is if bizot and Jay coulda made it, but it wasn't in the cards.

Past that, I've been working a ton and otherwise spending a good amount of time with michelle. So far this year I've averaged 43 hours per week of playing poker. By far the most I've ever played. Since I got myself in that hole in LA, I've just been motivated to grind grind grind...

I'm also looking for a house to buy and have gone to look at like 12 or so and none of them have quite been what I've been looking for. I'm pretty particular so I'm not going to settle cause I just don't think I'll be happy down the road if I do.

For poker I've been playing 10/20 to 50/100 LHE, a mix of 6max and heads up. On feb 19 I decided to give up the high stakes stuff for a bit as it was stressing me out a lot and making me not as fun to be around, at least for me. I didn't like feeling crabby. Since cutting it out, I've been a lot more balanced and have recently added working out back into the routine. It helps that it's been getting nicer out. I've also been destroying the mid-stakes games and that keeps motivation high.

I'm not much of a super hero person, but michelle's friends invited us to go see watchmen at the imax theater, so I'm off to that now. At least the graphical effects could be really cool.

I'm not doing that hot on my bracket so far, but it's still early. I got a little side bet with schneider and maybe hoppman. I forget....whoops. I also have been slacking on work this past week...on at like 24 hours or something. I think I'll put in a couple hours later tonight which will help, but I'm not too worried about it. I've definitely earned the right to enjoy life a little more for a week.

I typed this up quick and have plenty more to talk about but I'll save it for future blogs as we have to run now!

Ta ta!

pre-utah poker blog

After the wild game on friday I decided to go up to running aces for a little live poker. I was sitting next to a guy and we were having a pleasant conversation about poker and he then called 4 bets out of the big blind with jack six offsuit. He was talking about how he was stuck and he didn't have the money to play bigger. Usually I just say oh and kinda move on. This time I was feeling a little bold and chatty so I said something along the lines of "I dunno man, you could probably do without the j6o for 4 bets." I know I'm tapping the glass which is kinda bad for my co-workers but I don't make a living in that game and I was feeling nice. It was just him and I talking and everyone else was at the other end of the table so it was kind of a private conversation.

He looked up to me and said "Are you kidding? I won the pot. Isn't that what matters?" He was dead serious. In a semi-rude way I guess...I asked him if he was leveling me or if he was really on the level of whatever wins the pot was a good play. He got more adament with me about if I was serious that I thought otherwise. "Of course I'm on that level, I just want to win the pot and get the money and jack 6 did that." I knew it was time to drop the conversation. I tried to help a poor soul and he wasn't having it. Fine by me.

There's just so much of this in poker. Everyone thinks they are experts and it's so easy. I remember when a good friend of mine first played he came back and told me he had the game figured out...just play pretty much every hand and if you dont have much by the turn throw it away, as that's where people started getting serious about what they had. This made perfect logical sense to me. See what the flop brings and if by the time most of the hand is over you dont have much you can fold and wait until the next hand. I was excited that he and now I had it figured out.

Most people suck at poker and especially limit holdem. I used to suck. I still suck at a lot of the games. I can't play omaha for the life of me and it's sorta embarrasing. Same with heads up no limit. I put a reasonable amount of time into trying to learn it, too. There really is tons I don't know and tons I still have left to learn. That goes for limit holdem too...there is plenty left to learn...but it's kinda like weightlifting, the learning can be leaps and bounds for awhile, but you get to a point where getting much better is pretty tough. Part of why lhe is such a great game is the variance is incredible and a person can make terrible plays over and over and still win for quite some time. This leads to dilusion when they start losing. Most of these people are very successful in other facets of life so when they were having that poker success for awhile they got all this positive feadback from all these dumb things they did. Most successful people are at least reasonably logical, so they just assumed that meant the plays were right. Now they are just getting unlucky and might even be the most unlucky person ever.

I kind of went through that phase for about 8 months when the uiega was coming into effect. I was used to playing 4-6 tables and winning consistantly. The games changed and I was slow to adjust and it made for some painful losing. Finally I figured out that I couldn't play as many tables and had to cut out the phone/im/internet distractions and I got back on track. It was a slow process though because it was easy to get wrapped up in previous success. I was guilty too. I'm sure something similar will happen again, but I hope that realizing all of this will help me see things clearer and faster.


I've also come to the conclusion that most people just truly aren't serious about getting better and making money at poker. They may say they are and when you press a conversation they get all motivated, but 99 times out of 100 you talk to them a month later and they haven't really made any progress. They just want to play and 'pick things up' as they play. Practice is great and playing a lot is great, but if you don't spend some time learning and thinking about the game outside of the game itself, you're going to be getting too much feedback that is results oriented. It's truly work and it's often not that fun to sit there and watch a training video, or read a book, or do some math, or pour over you're pokertracker database to see if you can find anything interesting worth noting. That's another thing, almost all of my friends are too lazy to use poker tracker. Sure you can have tons of success without it and a lot of the 'high stakes notable players' don't use it but that doesn't make it not invaluable and it just often (but not always) shows how little true work somebody is willing to put into their game because it's something very easy to do and if they aren't willing to do that, it's not particularly likely they're doing the other small things to get better.

And don't get me started about tilters. I know so many people that look at me like I'm speaking russian when I ask them why they are still playing some guy heads up or still playing in a bad game. I'm stuck 7k, DUH!!! I can understand in the best game ever, but so often I see it in shitty spots...where they probably have an edge when they are on top of their game, but in their mindset are doing nothing but self destructing. They know how to technically play the hands, but they have too many bad habits. I'm not perfect, either. I played a little longer than I should have in a game in LA and it probably cost me.

mmm sleep

I think my body has finally figured out it's sleep schedule and I've been getting 9-10 hours every night for the past week. Man it's been great. Not feeling tired during the day is amazing.

I've been mashing the hours at poker and it's been very breakeven/small losing. Bout time I came off the heater...

Me, Dave p, Dave schnettler, billy, and Paul are heading to utah sunday for a quick 3 day trip. I'm really pumped up.

It's too bad there are 2 wild home games over that time, but skiing>wild. Wednesdays game was real fun (3-0 wild) and hopefully we'll have another great game tonight.

Kobblerdog came back yesterday and is here today again so wish me luck landing him before he busts his monthly allowance.

Vail and poker since LA

Poker is really dumb and I know I always go into it and I don't really plan on it too deeply this time. In my last post I talked about having my first daily win over 300 bets in my 5 year career. Well, I beat that record yesterday with a 340 bet win, which I followed up today with a 260 bet win. Since blowing my head in in LA I've won 1350 bets. To put it into some perspective my huge loss in LA was 120 bets...but they were bigger bets $ wise so I'm still down money.

This is ridiculous, I have top pair or a set every other hand and I just don't lose. I'm obviously playing good, but it's infinitely easier to play good when you're winning and have top pair every other hand. That said, I really am pleased with the state of the games these days. It seems liek every table I play has a drooler type of a guy and that just makes the negative variance so much less. The positive variance I'm experiancing is pretty fun.

Vail was a great time but I was just feeling tired the whole time. I'm pretty sure it was because my body was still recovering it's sleep schedule from LA. Every day I'd be starting to fall asleep at like 7pm. And when you're around a bunch of other people taht's brutal, so I came home a couple days early but still was able to get 3 days of skiing in.

I also bought new boot liners while I was there. Fitting was the most painful experience I've had in a few years. They inject this hot foam and it crushes the shit out of your feet to get the proper mold. Taking them out after it was over was an experience as I had lost all feeling so whacking them on the ground felt like i was paralyzed basically. Anyhow, TOTALLY worth it. Man the performance is tons better. And I even had $250 dollar footbeds before. They sucked compared to this. My left one might need to get tweaked a little but I have to ski it a few times to pack it out before I get it modified anymore, but the right one is absolutely perfect.

I also bought heaters for my boots. They are a paper thin heating element that they put in the liner and attatch to a battery pack that sits on the outside strap of your boot and it's controlled by a blue tooth controller that you wear around your neck. The boys gave me a little shit for it, but I'm sick of not being able to take all the runs I want to because of cold feet. I have bad circulation and having warm feet would drastically improve my skiing experience...so screw everyone else. :)

Oh, I looked at my stuff and I put in 180 hours of poker in jan...which makes it the most I've ever played I think. 45 hour weeks ftw. February is going to be similar. I'm just not going to play above 50/100 unless it's against kobblerdog. Haha. I'm looking forward to it.

post LA and off to vail

I almost never write blogs at home these days but after reading a few good ones from other people (tommy angelo and doyle brunson) I'm a little bit motivated. I also don't want to finish packing as that would make too much sense. My ski stuff is ready and most of my clothes but the finishing touches are always saved for the last minute. I don't have to leave for an hour and fifteen minutes. Plenty of time. I'll shower when I get done with this.

LA was a reletive disaster. It really couldn't have gone much worse (other than being irresponsible and tilting off even more money) but I lost more than any other trip I've taken and was not a great start to 2009. BUT. I always try to look at things with a positive light and maybe it was almost a good thing as it's gonna make me wanna just grind out the low limits and not be stressed out by poker for awhile so the next couple months should be pretty nice. It'll still be hard to avoid some of the good bigger games but aside from a little dabbling here and there I'm really going to try to stick to my best game (hu lhe) and just play bad players and grind a lot of hours and make a healthy number in feb.

Poker really is a fickle bitch. Since returning I've been just crushing and had my biggest winning day ever (bets wise not money wise) of 330 big bets. I've done 200-250 a number of times but 300 has always been elusive. Got there!

My sleeping lately has been completely ridiculous. I've been getting to bed at normal times (11pm-2am) but only sleep for like 4-5 hours before waking up wide awake, only to crash by noon and have to take an hour or 2 nap. I know I should probably skip the nap and just suck it up but it's been really hard.

Vail's getting 2 to 3 feet of snow by tuesday so I'm off with a few of the boys to go get some. We're staying with Brad L again and as always it's greatly appreciated (and pete too but he'll be in vegas while we're there.) I'm sure we'll be mashing lots of poker hands too. Ski trips are so perfect for working.

I was supposed to get a personal trainer when I got back from LA (one of those things I realised was something I should really do while I was losing and reflecting) but this past week was busy (bullshit excuse) and with my dumb sleep schedule (half legit) just didn't get done so I'm writing about it here to keep myself honest with it when I get back. If you see me ask me if I've done it if I havne't tell me how much I suck. Haha. I'm doing it. darn it.

I better go get ready.

san diego, mn, and off to LA

(I wrote this on jan 11 but forgot to post it)
Michelle had some time off work so we thought a little warm weather was in order so we popped down to San Diego for New years. The Chargers had a home playoff game so we all went to that too. I'm really jealous of the setup they have as we dont have any sort of good tailgating setup here in mn. They have parking lot after parking lot of fans tailgating and it's super fun. It was a really fun trip and it was the first time we've travelled together and she was a really awesome travel partner. I was able to fire up a round of golf too and it took me about 6 holes to remember how to golf...but it all came back and I'm really pumped for when it gets nice again to get back out on a consistant basis.

We had a boys night last night which was long overdue with john in town and it was a really good time. We went to a sweet new steak house in st. paul called the strip club. It's really tiny and has a very 'small town' feel. It was the 2nd time we had gone there and one of the owners had remembered us from when we had gone 2 months previous. Pretty cool. We had a real long dinner and ended up the last table there and our cab took a bit to come so they poored everyone who was still there a shot on the house (us and about 12 employees) and really made us feel welcome. They also gave us free apps cause our table wasn't quite ready at reservation time. I highly recomend anyone looking for a great dinner experience to check it out.

At dinner dave and john convinced me to come to LA for a few days for some poker. I've been itchin for some live play and it's going to be like -1 as a high in MN so it seemed like a great idea...Jay is coming up from San Diego and Ian and travis from seatle are here too so it's looking to be a fantastic time.

I started looking more at houses again this afternoon and was shocked at how much the market has changed in the last 2 years and even 6 months. The value you can get is unreal so I'm gonna take my time and find something I really like and probably in the spring make a purchase. I'm starting to think I may have to wait until my 2nd house to get one on a lake but that's not a huge deal.

Vail

Dave and I got to denver and it was looking like our flight into eagle (small one runway airport) was going to be trouble as we talked to brad and he said it was storming hard in vail at that time. A lot of times planes can take off but have problems landing and there is often tons of nasty turbulance (brad said everyone but like 3 people threw up on two of his flights...so dave and I were a little apprehensive) but it ended up being reletively smooth.

Brad came to pick us up but didn't make it far before he called and said it was going to take at least an hour and a half to make it because it was whiteout so we took a shuttle. It was the drivers first year and man could you tell. He made it but it was hairy and he was all over the road. We had to get switched into a subburban in vail cause the vans are more prone to get stuck, and that driver drove it into a gaurdrail that if it wouldn't have stopped us we were cyalateralligator over a cliff. We hit it only going perhaps 5 mph but it was still not that cool.

It ended up snowing a foot to a foot and a half depending where you were so sunday was a sick day of skiing so we ripped it hard. Afterwords we went to walmart to get some stuff and came home with hungry hippos among other games. Wow was that more fun than anticipated. We played it for 2.5 hours the first night and a couple a few days later. I highly reccomend it to everyone, it's great entertainment. THe first night we would do 1 ball at a time and the 2nd 4 at a time. We'd rotate seats and hippos to keep things fair as some are better than others and the table wasn't completely flat. The 1 ball at a time method is more skill but slower and not as much fun imo. Probably because i suck at it. I did well at the 4 ball way though.

(first part typed on plane but we were landing so I had to stop and I forgot to finish til now (2 weeks later haha))

The rest of the boys got there the next day. It was quite the group - Dave, Jay, Billy, pfunk, sponger, cts, and pickett. We had a sweet dinner that rivaled a good vegas dinner and skiing worked out far better than anticipated with such a large group as everyone was pretty similar in abilities. It often broke down after a run or two into groups of like 6 which is still a lot and a lot of fun.

I'm not sure of the final tally but it had to have snowed around 35-40" while we were there, so that was super nice and we had a couple good visibility days too.

A few days on the floor was enough for a beeker so I bought a twin matress that I'll have for subsequent trips which will be nice. I can't wait to go back.