Much Needed Update

Boy where does the time go. I've been meaning to update for quite some time, but laziness always prevail when I think about trying to write a post. Last month I was able to pull in a ROI of 40% which was decent. Miniftops and trying to satellite into those events really brought my ROI down, but if I can book a positive month, I'll take it. The miniftops were a nice change of pace and I cant wait for the next series in December. We placed somewhere in the middle out of the 27 teams in the contest, but next time I hope to have a better showing.

This month I was planning to strictly concentrate on PLO and PLO8 tourneys, but last weekend decided to change my mind. I've now decided that I'm gonna try my hand at the PLO cap games for the month and see how that goes. I really don't know what to expect at the moment. I feel I should be able to pull a 10BB/100 hands at these lower levels but that may be too optimistic. I'll have to evaluate at the end of the week to see if thats possible. I just had a 4hr session that ended with me making a whopping $5. During that session, however, I did have a revelation on a new strategy that may help me to decrease the variance and maximize my profits while minimizing my losses. I'll definitely test it out in the next couple days, but I really think I'll see a significant difference in my sessions.

I've really been watching a lot of poker shows online. For those interested, you can go to PokerTube and check it out. They carry tons of shows and even have ones that don't get televised in the states. I've been watching alot of the European Poker Tour eps. They show more than just the final tables, and they have turned out to be a good watch. The commentators also do a pretty good job of calling the action and trying to analyze the play. Speaking of commentators, Norman Chad has to be the worst poker commentator ever. His jokes are not funny, his voice is just generally annoying, and I'm pretty sure he has no clue how to play poker. I was really disappointed that ESPN decided to pretty much only televise the Main Event this year and show none of the other preliminary events. If it wasn't for Phil Ivey, I wouldn't even be watching.

In non-poker news, my fantasy football team got off to a good start going 4-0. I did however get my first loss of the season last sunday. So now im 4-1 good for 2nd place in the league. I really want to do good this year in fantasy as my last two years have been abysmal. I've been really keeping up with it and as long as nobody gets injured (my roster really cant afford it), this could be my year to finally take it down. Shipshape.

MiniFTOPS..

Well MiniFTOPS has begun and I've played 8 of the 10 events so far, and managed one cash. Its been somewhat of a crazy experience. The fields have been huge with 4 of the 10 events having over 10,000 people. And with huge fields come huge prize pools. 6 of the 10 events have had a 1st place prize of over $20k which is just insane since the buyins havent been more than $50. I hadn't played in many large field holdem tourneys, and I gotta tell you these things are a grind. Event 1 was a $22 nlhe tourney and was going pretty well, but somewhere around the 3-4 hour mark, I decided to bluff away over half my chips and blew my shots of cashing and making a deep run. My buddy, "shipshape715", made a semi deep run going out in 275th place which isnt bad for a tourney with over 16k+ people. I decided to skip classes on thursday and play Event 2 which was a $33 6-max shootout. For those that don't know what a shootout is, a shootout is a tourney where each table plays down until there is one winner and then the winners of each table combine to form another table and that repeats until there is a final table. I ended up going out on the first table. It was quite disappointing considering the fact that I was chipleader when we got down to 3 handed but the cards were not on my side and I ran pair into bigger pair twice to go out. Event 3 was a $22 limit omaha/8 tourney and it was a donk fest. Unfortunately for me my internet disconnected twice during big hands and I got timed out losing over 3/4th of my chips in the process. Needless to say I was not happy. Event 4 was a $22 1rebuy 1add-on nlhe tourney. I decided to not use my rebuy at the beginning and keep it as a safety net and good thing I did because I ran JJ into KK early. Unfortunately, the rebuy didnt go as well either. I had AT and called a raise from the button. Flop came Txx, and the raiser put me in. I called and he showed AQ. Of course a J hit the turn followed by a K on the river and he runner runnerd a straight and I was out before the add-on period. Event 5 was a stud hi tourney that I didnt play. Event 6 was the $55 plo 6-max, the event I had been looking forward to. Things started out great, and I was about 100 people away from making the money when the cards took a turn for the worse. I had double suited aces go down in flames and then Karina Jett ended up donking me out 60 spots from the money. I was soo pissed and while this was going on I was in event 7 which was a $10 nlhe rebuy tourney. I really didnt feel like playing anymore and was trying to bluff myself out the event but the two bluffs actually worked and I had build a decent stack. Then a few hands later I stack a player with AA and I had an above average stack. So I decided to take the tourney serious and ended up getting my first cash of the series. Going into the 6th hour of the tourney I had a top 20 stack with around 200 people left and was feeling good about making a possible final table run. But after the break, the fatigue from playing 8 hours straight caught up to me and I lost my focus and patience and ended up going out in 122nd place. I still considered it a big victory because it gave me confidence in my NLHE game and if I get back to that position I'll know how to handle it. Event 8 & 10 today were both NLHE tourneys. Event 8 was a $26 6-max knockout tourney, where I bluffed off half my stack and then ran AJ into AK blind v blind. Event 10 was a $33 tourney and I actually was playing pretty well in it. But in the 3rd hour my JJ couldnt hold against A5s and that was all she wrote. Overall the series hasnt gone quite as well I was hoping for but with seven more events left that I plan to play there is still time to get my final table. I also have a team competing in a pocketfives.com MiniFtops contest. My team consist of my friend Will, "b4nkrollin247", and his friend "Stiltz". There are 28 teams competing and the top 3 teams will get paid. The scoring is based on what place you finish in each tourney with the top 10 scores from each person being counted and right now its too early to tell who will win but since I'm the only person to cash on my team, we definitely have some ground to make up if we plan on making top 3. Tomorrows event is a $22 HA (round of pot limit holdem and round of pot limit omaha) event which is always a fun event and definitely and event I could go deep in so wish me luck. Shipshape.

August recap & September fun

Last month turned out to be a very good month. I ended up with a 167% ROI throughout all my tourneys played. Not too shabby of an ROI. I've never really been a big volume player as I believe I play much better with no more than four tourneys running. That being said, I do need to stop losing focus and keep up with my tourney schedule on the days that I would normally play. When I last posted, I was up around 2k and was poised to have a really good month. Unfortunately, the last half of the month I didn't play as many tourneys due to lack of focus and ended up with just a decent month. Its little bad habits like these I need to break. Another bad habit, I really need to break is giving up in tourneys after I suffer a bad beat that cripples me. Everybody knows the old saying, "all you need is a chip and a chair" (well unless you're not a poker player then you may have never heard this), but it is oh so true. Just last nite, I was in a $5 limit o8 donkament and got down to my last 70 chips. Stakes were at 80/160 which meant blinds were 40/80 and I didn't even have enough chips to cover the bb. I ended up sticking my last 70 in and quintupled up. Next thing I know few double up and triple ups later I am upto 8k and never looked back. Ended up making it to the final table but I bowed out in 6th when this guy horribly 3 outered me on the river chip leader vs 2nd in chips for huuuge stack. Still to comeback from 70 chips to final table felt good. Today however, instead of learning that you're never out until you're out. I got donked in my 6mx plo8 tourney and not only did I decide to donk the rest of my chips off in that tourney, I decided to just donk myself out of all my tourneys I was playing. This time around, my tilting actually got me really fortunate. In the $5 plo rebuy, as I was tilting, I made some crazy play with double suited cards and this guy ends up flopping middle set unfortunately for him I had a gut draw and everyone knows gut draws get there 80% of the time online and wouldnt you know it. I hit it on the turn to double up. Once that happened my brain kicked back in and was ready to work now that I had a huge stack. The guy was not too happy bout my play and let me hear it. I jus typed a smiley face and moved on. Its funny how one move like that can change everything because I eventually went on to ship the tourney. Entering heads up I was down 77k to 500k but played great, got lucky a couple times and BAM. SHIP IT. As I have said before, it feels great to ship a tourney and this was no different.

The month of September has just started and I've already final tabled two tourneys and shipped one. With WCOOP and MiniFTOPS right around the corner, this month promises to be a very good one. Be sure to check back as I will be giving recaps on the 12+ events I'll be playing in MiniFTOPS starting Sept 9th. Shipshape.

Update

Its halfway thru the month and aside from the $900 I had to drop to get my car fixed it couldnt be going better. I've been running really well in poker especially PLO mtt's and up a little over 2k on the month. I've been final tabling alot of tourneys unfortunately no wins yet, but the cashes have been nice. One thing that I believe that has helped me is talking out loud to myself deep in tournaments to keep my composure. Sometimes I have a tendency to get antsy especially if im not catchin any cards and end up making mistakes. Its noticing these little things that can take you from a losing/break even player to a winning player. I ended up skipping this FTOPS series and just going to wait for the miniFTOPS that starts in September. Its 1/10th of the buyins of the regular FTOPS which is inside of my bankroll and therefore I wont have to really worry about satelliting. I'll be looking forward to getting my first online five figure score in that series.

Played some live poker a couple days ago, at a friends house and it went pretty well. I hadn't played live in quite some time and it felt good to actually handle chips for a change. It was just a friendly $20 buy-in game and I walked out the big winner wit $89. I keep saying im going to do this but eventually I'm gonna start a live play bankroll and start playing wednesday nights at this local tournament. Hopefully I can get that off the ground next month.

School starts back up monday, and I have yet to register. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to things like this and hopefully it doesn't turn around to bite me in the ass. I just tried to register and the site was down, so gonna have to try tomorrow. I don't want to have to commute to school everyday, so hopefully I can still put together a tues/thursday schedule like I had last semester. In other non-related poker news, I've jus finished the first two seasons of How I Met Your Mother and I must say this is definitely my new favorite show. I jus got the third season and cant wait to watch it. I highly recommend this show if ur a fan of awesomeness, otherwise this may not be for you. Well I'm off to watch a couple of eps before bed. Shipshape.

RiverMePlz is back

"1M2G00D" is no more. Apparently FTP reads my blog and found out that I have two accounts so I had to revert back to my primary account. Hah, I am actually not sure how they found out but they did and I am back to playing on "RiverMePlz". It sucks because I get no rakeback but I run better on RiverMePlz so its whatever. I guess I'll just have to get my name in red to receive rakeback. And speaking of running good. First time back on the old account and I final table the 5k guarantee. I got down to heads up with 4:1 chip disadvantage and fought hard getting close to even at one point but wasnt able to comeback for the win. Still 2nd place was damn good and definitely loved how I played throughout the tourney.

Full Tilt has upgraded their software and boy does it suck, at least on my computer. Its jus so damn laggy. It literally takes me 5 minutes to log on. Plus my tables would lock up from time to time for about 2 minutes. And alot of the times I would have a big hand and it gets timed out. Coincidence? I think not. I really hope they fix these issues soon. Maybe its just my computer, I dont know. I need to get a new one anyways, this laptop is a POS. FTOPS starts today and I may or may not play the first event. I really dont feel like trying to satellite, but a guaranteed first prize of 180k seems to good to pass up. I'll definitely try to get in all the omaha and omaha8 events, but I dont think I'm ready to tackle big NLHE fields just yet. Well my tourneys have started so I'll have to wrap this up. Til next time. Shipshape.

What a night

Well as I said earlier my goal was to final table both the 4k and 5k guarantees, well you can cross the 5k off the list. Last night I got 5th place in the 5k guarantee for jus under $500. I felt I played well throughout and had I won this hand, I possibly couldve gone on to win the thing and the $1700 with it. God what a sick turn. While I was playin the 5k, I was also playin the $5 plo8 and managed to ship it for $416. This was definitely some of the best plo8 I had played in a while, and I pretty much got handed the win as the final table was super soft. I love when its easy. I also managed a min cash in the $5 plo and had I really felt like playing it I possibly couldve final tabled that as well, but I donked off instead. So I ended up playing 4 tournaments, getting 3 cashes, 2 final tables, and 1 win. Id say a helluva night. With FTOPS around the corner, its time to start making sure my tourney game is on point. Id love nothing more to final table/win an FTOPS event right before school starts. If you'd like to follow me on the rail, I play under "1m2g00d". Those are zeros not O's. I no longer use rivermeplz. I love rail support so hit up that observer chat!

Also congrats go out to my boy and shipshape crew member.. "shipshape715" for final tabling the 200k double deuce on sunday. He got 8th out of 11k ppl for $3100. GJ. Shipshape.

Mid-Month Update

Boy what a terrible start to this month. I've been completely unfocused. Ive been trying to "get rich" quick and have been failing miserably. First I took the $50 I had on Ultimate Bet and played blackjack hoping to run the br up real fast (lol). That was the stupidest idea ever. I hate UB so much tho so I didnt really care. I didnt even know I had money on their site, had they not emailed me saying that they were giving me a free $25 I wouldve never known. Then i read about this guy on 2p2 who went on a heater playin omaha and turned a $100 into 70k+ in like a week and that just drove me insane. I kept thinkin to myself, why cant I do that. So I tried. Fail, fail, fail. I had $80 on stars and lost that in a matter of 45 mins. I shouldve known it was gonna be bad when 3 hands in I turn the nut flush only to run into a straight flush. I still dont know how I managed to not go bust on that hand, but I did eventually lose it. On Full Tilt I fared a little better getting off to a decent start and making profit the first couple days but I eventually started running bad/playing bad and decided to give it up. I find it crazy that three years ago I was crushing 2/4 and now cant even win at .10/.25c. Bleh. However, I am now refocused on tourneys and my goal is to final table the 4k ($26 PLO8) and 5k ($26 PLO) guarantee by the end of the month. My tourney game has been pretty sharp, although I'm still finding myself making stupid/spewy plays late in tourneys. Need to fix that. Im due for a big shippy tho, I can feel it. Well I thought I had more to write about and I probably do, but its 3am and my brain doesnt want to function so its time for sleep. Shipshape.

OPR & Doomswitch??

Every time I see that picture it makes me laugh, but thats what it was like last month and the first couple weeks of this month. Finally last week, they turned off the doomswitch and I was able to final table 3 tourneys. I only managed to make top 3 finish in one of them, getting a 2nd, but it was a great boost to the bankroll. One of the reasons I love poker is because it really test who you are inside. Are you able to withstand bad beat after bad beat? I know after weeks and weeks of it, it becomes very tough. You'll curse the heavens; complain to friends why me? But finally when all the things do fall into the place and you pull of that win it feels good. Really almost no better feeling than winning a tournament, regardless of the buyin or number of people. Hopefully I can keep the winning ways up and get a really nice score in the next couple of weeks.

In other poker related news, http://www.officialpokerrankings.com has been told by FTP to remove all their tournament statistics from the site as they believe it provides an unfair advantage and is very similar to how a shared hand history database works. This is just completely untrue. Not only does this site not provide any hand histories watsoever, it also does not provide an unfair advantage because it is available to everyone. Although I did occasionally look up other players stats to see if they had experience deep in tournaments, my main use was for personal stat keeping. I also liked to check up on my friends and see how they've been doing and if they had any big wins recently. I didn't even realize how much I used it til they took it away. I hope they reverse their decision very soon. The one good thing that has come of this, is now I actually took the time to figure out how to setup my PokerTracker to track tournaments. So starting next month I'll be able to have some ROI stats and garphs to post. It will only be my Omaha and Omaha H/L tourneys since thats all my program tracks but thats pretty much all I play anyways. Soo til next time. Shipshape.

Blogs Coming Soon..

Been a hella while since I blogged last, but I'll be back soon. I havent decided if I want to keep my page here or start a new one under a different name since I no longer play under rivermeplz but we'll see. Til then check out these two hot drift videos from Ken Block. The 2nd one just came out but I dont think its as good as the first.. still dope tho. What you think??

I wished I lived in "durrrland"

God Im Lazy...

Ahhh where to begin... Well just got back from New Orleans for spring break trip, and it was pretty amazing like last year. Think last year there may have been more ppl on the streets but I dunno. Unfortunately my ID is expired and they wouldnt let me inside the casino, which was hella lame, but its probably for the best as I didn't wanna be broke when I got home. School has been going pretty good. At the halfway mark, and got A's so far. Its going to be a grueling April though as I have two big group projects in marketing and finance, that will probably give me headaches until they've actually been presented. I really do despise group projects, but I actually have good groups, so hopefully it goes off flawlessly.

Poker has been a bit dry, as i havent been able to put in the volume I'd like to. I have made the transition to my rakeback acct, so the RiverMePlz acct is no more. I'll prolly have to move this blog accordingly, but it prolly wont happen for a while due to chronic laziness. The rakeback acct seems to be doomswitched at the moment which is hella gay. I wanted to start back playing holdem, so I've been playing a few 45 mans and boy holdem can be annoying. I've been running into quads, getting runner runnerd, set vs set, etc., its not fun. I've actually been getting tilted quite easily and stopping my sessions early, which is really uncharacteristic of me, but its better than continue to play when I dont feel like it.

I've recently been kinda sleuthing around the 2p2 forums and have come across some sick sng prop bets. The first one I came across was by spacegravy, who was someone I actually heard of before this bet and knew he was pretty good player. But his bet was that he'd make 40k in 30 days playing nothing but $55+5 sngs (6-45 man). Pretty sick proposition, but felt this was pretty possible for him to accomplish. Unfortunately he had to give up halfway through the bet. Although I think he has the skill to accomplish this bet, he had no plan watsoever, and basically tried to just play as much as possible and ended up overextending himself. I guess he'd thought be able to play 25 hr sessions and have good results, and for sure was not the case. I cant remember how much action he booked, but it was a costly mistake. The 2nd prop bet was jus crazy. This guy was laying 1:3 that he could turn $100 into 10k in 15 days playing nothing higher than $16 sngs, and cant include 90 or 180 mans. Impossible right? Who is this guy you may ask? Well he goes by the name of Boku87 and I had never heard of him but he will be a legend. Not only did he accomplish this bet but finished it with a day and a half still left. Just incredible. Definitely the hardest part about this bet is the start. Dont get a good start and the bet is over right from the get go. Luckily for him, he absolutely crushed the first 3 days, and had turned his $100 in $2200. Sickaments. He continued along having a few downswing days, but inevitably did reach the $10k mark in 14 days. If you want to see a recap of the bet u can find it here.(Pretty quik read, mainly jus graphs of each day). Anyways congrats to him, definitely a motivation booster to get on the grind. Well im bout to start a session, glgl. Shipshape.

Online poker > Live poker

Well apparently more people read this thing than i thought, so sorry for the lack of updates. School sux. But neways I'll be doing a full update first week of March. For now I leave you with one persons opinion on why online poker is better than live poker. Original article can be found here.

1. Earning power:
a. Online poker: Sure it takes a considerable amount of work to reach the point where you’re a comfortably profitable online player, but once you do so the money is considerable. How considerable? If you’re good enough to reach 50% ROI at mid-high stakes MTT’s online and can put in $2500 worth of buy ins a day six days a week you stand to expect to make $7,500 a week (obviously expectation is not actually earn.) That’s enough money to call up your lawyer and ask “What’s happening you broke mother fucker?!”

b. Live poker: Because you can’t put enough volume in at live poker to find a true expectation over your life time, I can only assume that the old adage “The house always wins” applies and we’re all losing money at live poker to the casino all the time. Except Timex of course.

2. Retardation:
a. Online poker: Because you play online poker in the safety and comfort of your own home there is a very low probability that you will encounter someone spewing retardation directly into your brain on a daily basis. Make sure to avoid leaving the TV on Fox News to add further protection.

b. Live poker: Retardation lurks everywhere in live poker, mostly as a result of the retards that surround you at the table. They will tell you how you misplayed your hand and discuss ways in which to better your play. Your only defense is to smash your fingers into your ears and scream “BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA I DON’T LISTEN TO RETARDATION I CAN’T HEAR YOU BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLAAAAAH!!!!!” as loud as possible. In the event that you fail to do so your brain will experience symptoms similar to gangrene. If you are unfamiliar with those symptoms here is the appropriate Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangrene. Yea, you don’t want that shit in your brain.

3. Health:
a. Online poker: Health risks in online poker are vastly different to those associated with live poker. While habitual fat assery is common in both, online poker has a number of unique concerns. The most common injury is a bladder burst, caused by hours upon hours sitting in tournaments with no synchronized breaks and no appropriate near by waste receptacle. To prevent this common risk consider investing in a quality thermos, such as the ones offered at www.thermos.com. There’s even a ‘Barbie’ thermos, known by online poker players as the ‘R. Kelly model’. Carpel tunnel is also common amongst poker players, but recently doctors studying the condition stated that people who spend the majority of the work day at the computer should warm up their muscles through thorough masturbation prior to use.

b. Live poker: Though live poker has the similar high risk of fat assery, there is the added risk of scum baggery. You may get jumped in your hotel hall way a la Greg Raymer, or perhaps smashed in the head at knife point a la James Potter, or perhaps robbed at gun point twice outside the Rio a la the wife of Michael Mizrachi, or have your heart shatter like a dumped 12 year old girl when busting the WSOP main event 2008 a la Jean Robert Bellande. There’s also the brain gangrene stuff.

4. The smell:
a. Online poker: My apartment smells like a mix of BBQ, bananas, the yellow lemon stuff I spray where the dog pees, and a dash of smug satisfaction.

b. Live poker: Smells like BO, weird Venetian perfume stuff, cigarette drenched jackets, and fear.

5. The commute:
a. Online poker: The roughly three second walk from my bed to my computer. $100 says it can be done in two.

b. Live poker: At best, a decent drive into the casino. At worst, 30 hours straight in airports and planes that will constantly cause money transportation problems. Enjoy customs detention you terrorist funding drug dealers.

6. The chicks:
a. Online poker: Has the girls of the internet. More porn than you can shake a stick at.

b. Live poker: Has real women, who expect to be paid for things.

7. Strategy:
a. Online poker: Requires in depth knowledge of range percentages, patterns of thinking and non thinking players, comprehending poker tracker statistics, a complete understanding of ranges, a balance of aggression, the ability to manipulate bubbles, the ability to three and 4 bet light, stack sizes, position, and a highly developed multi tasking ability.

b. Live poker: Requires the ability to tell when a player on the table is actually, somehow, above level one thinking.

8. Top pro:
a. Online poker: Has Patrick Antonius, you know, God.

b. Live poker: Has Barry Greenstein, who come to think of it, has probably bagged more chicks than Antonius. Well played Greenstein.

9. The hang outs:
a. Online poker: Has the forums, where you can learn the game, make friends the world over, and go from universally beloved to feverishly ostracized pariah in the event of the slightest infraction. Other popular hang outs include Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and several far less credible poker sites.

b. Live poker: Has the player parties, with the guy to girl ratio at a figure so high three NASA mathematicians died trying to figure it out. It also has several live poker rooms across the world, home of rakes so big they require gigantic boxes under the table for the drop.

10. The chairs:
a. Online poker: I’m sitting in a chilled out plush leather recliner that has wheels, which affords me the option of spending my entirely driving around the apartment, were I so inclined. If I was balla I would go and buy one of those massage things you drape over it, but I’m not. Actually no wait, I really should do that.

b. Live poker: For just $2 a minute (that’s a $120 hourly) the masseuses at the WSOP will massage out the aches and pains the live poker chairs will inevitably incur.

January results, and FTOPS,

Last month was a pretty good tourney month for me. I ended with a 49% ROI which makes for the 10th month in a row I've been able to turn a positive ROI, which is not to shabby. Ive already gotten off to a good start this month, final tabling a couple tourneys but no 1k+ wins. I feel this may be a good month to bust a big one open, and judging by the way I'm playing it could happen soon.

FTOPS started today and I was fortunate to win a seat into event #1 on the first satellite I played. The prize pool got up to 1.2 million and first would take home $216k. Not bad for 8-9hrs of work and $216 buy in. I was pretty excited to be able to play, but my patience got the best of me tonite though as I wasn't catching anything. I ended up sticking it in with the nut flush draw, only to run into my opponents top two pair. Oh well. Hold em is a game of patience and unlike omaha, you only get to see a flop on avg about 15% -20% of the hands you're dealt, which I'm not used to. I need a little bit more practice in NLHE mtt's. I just decided to skip my last two classes and play in event #2 tomorrow. The way my PLO/8 game has been, seems stupid to pass this up, so hopefully it pays off. One of my goals for this year was to final table an FTOPS event, and even though there are still 3 more series left in the year, it would be nice to scratch that off the list now. Wish me luck. Shipshape.

Birthday & More

Two Saturdays ago I celebrated my 24th birthday. My friend got me a hotel in the galleria area and we pregamed it up there. We then went to club 26ten and kept the festivities going. Unfortunately that's pretty much all I can tell you about the night cause I don't remember too much else. As u can guess I was pretty hammered. It was probably one of my best birthday celebrations and would like to thank my friends that were there to share it with me. I've been blessed to have some truly great friends in my life and hopefully one day they'll still be there to share in my success.

School has started back up and this semester is probably going to be a bit harder than my last. Finally getting into classes for my major, so the light is starting to shine at the end of the tunnel. I was able to schedule all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I'm pretty excited about that.

In poker news, it's been a slightly down month due to my impatience to stay away from the cash games. In 2006, all I did was play cash games and I miss being able to play them. But if I'm to make it, I really need to be disciplined with my playing and don't play games that are out of my bankroll as that will only hurt me in the long run. Of course this seems to be easier said than done. Well that's all I got for now, til next time....

Weekend Update

This past weekend was alotta fun as usual. Thursday night, me and a few friends went out to this bar in midtown called Coaches Pub to watch the national championship game. Had never been there before but it was a decent sports bar. Looked like they had a great fried food sampler that I wish I would've gotten to try but oh well. The buffalo wings weren't that great. The game itself was ok. I was rootin for OU, but knew Florida was most likely going to win, so I really wasn't disappointed in the outcome.

Friday night a group of us went over to the Improv Comedy Club to see Greg Fitzsimmons (sp?). I have somewhat of a love for stand-up comedy and definitely something I wouldn't mind trying to get into, although I hear its pretty hard work and I can be lazy at times.. who knows. I don't know why I don't go to more shows though, probably the laziness thing, but I think that's something I'm gonna try to do more often. We went to the 8pm showing and I was already pretty drunk when we got there and don't remember much of the jokes but I do remember laughing my ass off at the time. After the show we went out to Christian's Tailgate to do some karaoke, but we never made it onto the stage. Don't think I would've been able to sing/rap anyways. Pretty throwed.

Saturday, I decided to take it easy and stay in and just chill. I got bored midway through the day and thought, why don't I go play some online poker. Boy that turned out to be a mistake. I decided to take a shot at 1/2 cap PLO and just got destroyed. I think i managed to win 2 cap pots the whole session. I lost with top set 3 or 4 times and couldn't hit a flush draw to save my life. It was just one of those sessions where you just cant hold, and when you put it in with the wrap/flush draw you just don't get there. I lost most of the profit I had made that week in a 2.5 hr session. Very frustrating, but I'll be getting it back. I really need to get my PokerTracker set up so I can analyze these sessions. I'll work on gettin that runnin in the upcomin weeks.

Today I experimented with playing single table turbo SNG's, which actually went really well. I played 2 $55s and 8 $33s. Went 0/2 in the $55s but 5/8 in the $33s with 4 wins. Although I did pretty well I find single table SNG's boring, so I've decided tomorrow I'm gonna go back to grinding 45 mans like I used to do a year ago. The ROI will be much more rewarding when I ship and they're fairly easy to cash. The plan is to play nothing but $26 45 mans & $26 PLO MTT's until I get to $3500. Once I get there I'll be able to comfortably play .50/$1 PLO and that's when the fun begins! That's all for now. Peezy out.

The Blog Is Back!

Its a new year, and that means new beginnings. The blog is making a triumphant return. I neglected to update my blog during the school year last semester due to laziness, but this semester that all will change. I managed to get all my classes on just Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I'll be able to have more night sessions to post about. Another change is that I will have other content on here besides just poker. That way I'll be more likely to update it on a consistent basis. Some interesting stuff can go on in my life, so hopefully it'll make for a fun read.

So after my 4 day drinking binge, which was the New Years weekend, I finally got back to playing some poker. I started today playing 5 tournaments and boy did I get out the gate fast. I managed to cash 4 out of the 5 tournaments I played today but not only that, 3 of them were final tables. *triple fist pump.* Unfortunately, I couldn't get a ship shape out of any of em, but a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ain't bad. The $11 HA tourney, which I took 2nd, was a bit of a heart breaker as I was chip leader going into heads-up. But obv I couldn't get a hold when I had nut str8 vs set and flush draw. Oh well, that was one of the best sessions I had ever had, and hopefully will not be the last. Poker is so ezzzz.

I got knocked out of my last tourney just in time to catch the beginning of the Fiesta Bowl. I didn't think this would be much of a game wit UT easily handing OSU their asses but boy was i wrong. UT looked dazed and confused the first half and I was not happy with the play calling being called on the offensive side of the ball. 2nd half tho, proved to be much more entertaining as the offense started to show signs of life, and Texas went into the 4th quarter with a lead of 17-6. Of course they didn't want to win the game easily, so they let OSU come back and take the lead with 2 mins left to raise the spirits of the Buckeyes just to have them crushed. As Texas scored with 16 seconds left on the clock. What a game! I really wish I could've been at the bar for this one as I bet it was nuts. 6th street will be alive and well tonite. Hopefully the national championship game will be just as exciting as this one. Don't know where I'll be watching it, but you can bet I'll be pretty drunk afterwards.

Alright, its bed time now.. GL to all in 2009.