New Blog Yo!

Check it out at http://www.nlhestruggles.wordpress.com/ and update your links. I will be deleting this blog a few days after this post.

This Blog

Well, I am just not a fan of blogspot. It is almost certainly user error, but I am going back to wordpress, so please update your links. The new blog is www.nlhestruggles.wordpress.com. Thanks!

Every

Hand gets there. Every prayer answered. Losing like mad. It's getting to be just downright ridiculous now. Fuck poker.

It's a 15 BI downer over my last 23k hands and breakeven for the 30k hands before that. It is just getting so damned frustrating at the moment. I am doing everything I can think of to improve as a player, but the constant coolers and ass raping suckouts are just crushing my spirits.

I will continue to try and improve my play and keep my foot on the pedal, because I really wanted a certain amount of debt removed before baby #2 gets here, which is in about 7 weeks.

Eesh

Played for an hour today and lost 2.5 BIs. This run is getting ugly. I just can't buy a bucket to save my life. I reviewed hands today and there just isn't anything I can do about these beats. I get coolered and sucked out on. I am going to keep getting in QQ preflop as I should and I am going to raise sets when I should and if they get beat, they get beat. I have to focus on playing good and solid poker and just trying to improve my play and eventually it will turn around. It'd be nice if it would occur soon so I can make some money and pay off some credit card debt before my second child comes at the end of July, but it isn't in my control, I just have to keep on keepin' on.


Also, Jim Joyce, the first base umpire during tonight's Tigers game, needs to lose his job. He blew the most obvious call tonight. The Tigers still won, but the blown call was for the last out of a perfect game. I feel awful for Armando Galarraga, since he won't go into the books as the 19th perfect game in mlb history, but he was very polite after the game and he never complained to the umpire about the call. He stood in disbelief, but didn't say anything to him until after the game when Joyce approached him in te locker room to apologize for blowing his perfect game. All Armando did was tell the umpire that no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes. Maybe we can all learn something from him.


It wasn't really a close call, see the picture below.

You can read about it and see the replay on either espn.com or mlb.com if you like. Feel so badly for the kid.

Pocket 9s

Edit: I still don't get why blogspot is so crappy with editing posts (read: why I don't get how to properly use it), so I am writing in the formulas by hand.

I do remember a friend and very good poker player saying that when players got out of line with their 3betting, he would sometimes 4bet shove 100 bbs deep with a medium pp, and said it would show a profit. So I decided this morning to do some math and see if my 4bet shove BvB w/ 99 was nearly as poor as I thought it was. A key difference here of course is how often the villain will fold relative to the limits my friend played and also the difference in the calling range of players at the limits.

The first thing I did was make some approximations of a few calling ranges for villain. These calling ranges and my estimated equity against them include:

· JJ+, AQ+: 38%
· JJ+, AK: 32%
· TT+, AK: 30%

I figured the formula to determine my required fold equity would be as follows:

Win when called - Losses when called + Win when he folds = 0

The first term is what I win when I get called. Simply put, this is just my equity share of the pot multiplied by $100 and then multiplied by the probability that he calls my 4bet shove. In mathematical terms, it is:

100 * E * Pc

Okay then, what about the second term? The loss term for when I get called and lose is going to be villain’s equity share of the pot in place of my equity share in the term above.

100 * (1 - E) * Pc

Finally when villain folds, I win the $8 in the pot every single time and never lose, so that term is defined as:

8 * Pf

The probability he calls though is simply the same thing as the probability he folds subtracted from 1, so substitution and combining everything leads to the following equation:

100 * E * (1 - Pf) - (100 * (1 - E) * (1 - Pf)) + 8 * Pf = 0

At this point we can easily plug in our estimated equity share of the pot and calculate our breakeven fold equity required. Here is what I calculated:

· JJ+, AQ+: 38% à Fold equity needed: 75%
· JJ+, AK: 32% à Fold equity needed: 82%
· TT+, AK: 30% à Fold equity needed: 83%

We can see, it isn’t really all that pretty. Was it profitable though? Does he fold enough? Well, I think in this spot, he most likely calls with JJ+ and AK. So let’s use 32% equity for our analysis. Let’s follow that with assuming in this particular spot, versus me, villain is most likely 3betting about 10% of the time. What percentage of hands constitute JJ+ and AK? Well, I have to think a little, since I don’t have poker stove with me and I know that there are 1,326 combinations of hands possible. I know that JJ+ and AK have 40 combinations, so that would mean that JJ+ and AK are ~ 3% of hands. So he is folding 70% of the time when I 4bet shove here.

That means my play is going to show a negative expected value. However, by how much? Plugging in a fold equity of 70% yields an expected value of -$5.20.

What if he does actually call with AQ? Well, my equity share of the pot increases but my fold equity decreases. Let’s see what happens. My equity share is now 30% and villain will fold 5.8% of the time. Plugging these values in the other equation yields an expected value of -$5.44. This is not really surprising when you think about it. My equity share goes up, but my fold equity goes down. We are adding in hands that flip with us, so it shouldn’t have too much of an impact on our bottom line, since it constitutes 25% of his range and not something like 90% of it, which would have a significantly larger impact.

Therefore, it was not a good play to 4bet shove 99 in that spot. However, it wasn’t the worst play ever and not nearly as –EV as I thought it would be. And these are all estimations of calling ranges and how often villain is 3betting. Obviously if his calling range is wider, I am in more trouble and if he is 3betting more often (very possible), it isn’t as poor of a play. It isn’t something I should lose sleep over, I should just focus on improving my play and not letting emotions get the best of me. I ran into KK but I easily could have gotten a fold or ran into AK and won a flip or heck, maybe sucked out! My point is that my actual value was far worse than my expected value for the play and I just need to learn from this and move on. There is nothing wrong with some 4bet bluffing and I do that from time to time with certain situations and better hands to do it with via card removal and whatnot, but this is not a play I need to have in my arsenal for these games.

Continuing to do analyses like this and think about how to exploit my opponents will lead to success, so the exercise is worth the time I spent and I can learn something from it. That is what is important. Next session, I will focus on playing solid poker and be mindful of the present and that should lead to a well-played session which is all I can control and need to be thinking about. That’s all for now!

Day 1 of June

Ouch! I ran super terrible bad and hard as I tried at first, I tilted very badly. It got to the point to where I had no clue of what to do on various hands. For example, what is your play when a recreational player leads into you on a TTxr board for 1.75x pot? You have KK and what do you do when he shoves 2.7x pot on an A turn? This line makes no sense to me! That isn't really tilt related though, but shortly thereafter I 4bet shoved 99 BvB into a reg who has a 3bet of 8%. I know that it may be higher because A) it is BvB and B) I fold too often to 3bets. I am not sure if this is a bad play or not though tbh, but I did it anyways and he snapped me with KK and I don't spike.

However, I buckled down and really focused and played solid poker. I got itback from -4 BIs to -1.5 BIs. Volume was good, where I got in 2,716 hands in 2.45 hours of play.

One thing I am really going to be doing is analyzing the play of regs since I come across them so often. The tables are full of recreational players and that will be the bulk of my profits, but really for the most part, it is just ABC poker versus those players, so not too much of my time should be spent working on that portion of my game I don't think. I am getting a new laptop soon and selling off my desktop and monitors, so that wil allow me to study on my lunch breaks at work like I used to do. My old laptop is just not cutting it anymore, I gotta get a new one and since it will be new and I am selling my desktop to a coworker, it will actually be close to, if not totally, simply a swap of computers, which is sweet.

I am bound and determined to succeed and do well. Nothing will stop me, because the only thing getting in my way is me and I won't let myself be destructive anymore. Tomorrow is a day off, it is my 3-year anniversary. :o)

June Goals

I have two goals for June:

1. Play 60k hands
2. Be positive about poker and live in the current time frame, not the past.

That is all.

End of May

Had an interesting day today at the tables. I battled back from being 5 BIs down to start the day. I fight and fight and fight and play good poker and get to the point where I am actually up slightly over a BI. Then, poker says fuck you to me again. I proceed to lose two set over sets and a flip in the blinds where the idiot got TT in against me. So I finish the day down 2.4 BIs and I say to poker: "Fuck you too bitch."

Edit: I played one more session today, hoping to continue to play well, as I felt I had played well all day and just been constantly fucked over and over. Well, I should have went to bed, because I continued to get fucked over. And over. And over (though maybe I need to fold the river, but ffs, I am getting a 1,000,000:1, but probably still a fold anyways). And over. So fuck off poker. Just fuck off.

Shit Like This

is really starting to piss me off.

$0.25/$0.50 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	$33.05
UTG+1	$94.20
CO	$30.75
BTN	$92.85
SB	$47.30
Hero	$54.35

• Pre-Flop ($0.75, 6 players)Hero is BB
• 

UTG calls $0.50, 4 folds, Hero checks

• Flop ($1.25, 2 players)
• 

Hero bets $1.25, UTG raises to $2.50, Hero raises to $8.50, UTG calls $6

• Turn ($18.25, 2 players)
• 

Hero bets $13, UTG calls $13

• River ($44.25, 2 players)
• 

Hero checks, UTG goes all-in $11.05, Hero folds

• Final Pot: $55.30

• UTG wins $53.10 (net +$20.05)
• Hero lost $22

Cotninuing

to just get pounded in the ass at the tables. It is really frustrating to repeatedly get destroyed, but what can you do?

Annoyed/Satisfied

I made a bit of a comeback on the month, into the green and felt like I was playing well again and of course a little run good never hurts where I got villains to pay off some bets and not just fold to cbets when I had hands. Then boom. Run bad returns. 7 BIs below EV in the last 2 days. Coolers left and right where I ran below EV technically, but had like 10-20% equity. The good news is that I know I am playing better and that is all I can control, so I am quite satisfied with that. I also ran two multistreet bluffs that reminded me again to just not bother bluffing at this level. Sometimes it takes some mistakes to repeat these lessons. Both times I was spot on with my read when the cards were turned over, but they just weren't capable of folds, despite my range getting smacked in the face and I definitely could rep the hands that beat him easily. Both players were regs, but it just reinforces how thin I need to be valuebetting and just not worry about bluffing. It's a lesson I need to relearn from time to time though and I will carry it forward until the next time I inevitably make the mistake. lol Hopefully the gaps between mistakes increases though. :o)

Insane!!!

So the Thursday evening I played a round of golf with some friends of mine. We hit up this course which is by far the best buy for the buck in town, at $14 to walk 18 holes. Many courses here don't allow you to walk, which is a crying shame. Even out of shape, I prefer to walk. It was an interesting round to say the least. Golf is about the most unpredictable game I know of. We were playing this points game based on handicaps, where you get +1 point for a triple or worse, 0 points for a double bogey, +1 point for a bogey, +2 points for a par, +4 points for a birdie, and +6 points for an eagle. You subtract your handicap from 36 to see how many points you start with. If you're an 18 handicap for example and got 18 bogeys, you would finish with 0 points. I have only played a handful of times in the last 6 months, so I did not expect too much, especially walking. On the range, I literally hit 0 solid iron shots, every iron was pure awful. And by awful I mean a bladed shot. It was prety frustrating. I talked to the guys and we agreed that I would start with +16 instead of +18 and if I hit some solid irons in the first few holes (by solid I mean in the air and near the green) then I'd bump it back up to +18. So the starting points were: John +31; Elkins +26; Byers +18; me +16 (maybe +18). Now if I am playing regularly, I am about a 10 handicap anymore, since I don't have time to practice, but with such limited time playing, I knew there would be some errant tee shots, leading to lost balls. Lost balls quickly add to your score.


We start on the back 9, and I proceed to start off horrifibly. I bogey the first hole after losing my tee shot. Thankfully it was stroke and distance, so I did not have to retee and getting a 5 was fairly routine, given how far I hit the tee shot and that it was barely off line. Then next hole was a crushed drive and then I hit my wedge from 80 yards thin, and walked away with another bogey. On the short par 4 12th, I tried to drive the green and hit another errant tee shot that lead to stroke and distance and I walked away with a double bogey. Finally, on the 13th hole, I not only took a fall and cut up my leg when some rocks slipped away from me near the cart path, but I lost yet another tee shot leading to another double bogey. So I sat at +6 through 4 and in a bad mind frame. At that point I decided to just exhale and suck it up and just enjoy the day. I Wasn't going to let a poor round of golf ruin a nice day with some friends. Normally poor rounds don't affect me like this start did, but I just can't tolerate not keeping the ball in play, it is very frustrating.


Then, the change occured and the comeback I made was maybe the most remarkable I have ever made in my life. After being +6 through 4 holes, I proceeded to hit 10 of the next 14 greens in regulation and never lost a ball again. I made an adjustment and trusted my swing that day and it paid off big time. I only made 2 bogeys the rest of the round along with no doubles, and I also made 4 birdies. So having played literally about 5 times or so in the last 6 months and starting out so hirribly, I played the final 14 holes at 2-under par, and finished with +4 76! I couldn't believe it and neither could my friends. I mean, people get into grooves, but you don't usually see such an amazing run of 14 holes, especially after a rotten start, like what I did. All parts of my game came together. I hit solid tee shots, I hit good irons, and I got up and down on 3 of the 4 greens I missed. On one of my bogeys, I actually hit a very good shot, but the yardage was off by 15 yards. I went first, so fml. Everyone else adjusted and agreed the yardage was way off. My putting was pretty amazing as well, with only 1 3-putt in that span and that was off of a lag from 35 feet to 2 feet, and the second putt did a 360 and stayed out. It happens. I also missed a birdie on the par 5 18th that I had from about 5 feet or so. I hit it exactly where I wanted to hit it, the putt just fooled me in that it did not break like I thought it would. I don't mind misreads for some reason, but I despise when I pull or push a putt.


Here is the scorecard:

I was suppose dot go to Knoxville this weekend, but I feel pretty terrible at the moment, so I turned around and came back home. Kinda disappointing, I was going to visit some friends I have not seen in some time and also go see Mastodon and Between the Buried and Me tonight for free. Would have been a sick show for sure.

wtf

< 500 hands. - 3.5 BIs. Ugh. Just set mine against me in 3bet pots w/ 33 or get it in with 20% equity, you'll win, don't worry.

Oh Come On Already

Obv run good for me.

We have a winner!

Lots tons more flips and missed every draw in the world, standard.

At least I improved my play for this session and got some thin value in spots where I would have missed it before, so I only lost 2 BIs today instead of about 3. Go me.

Eesh. The awful run continues. fml in the second session.

Changes

Well, when you combine poor play with running poorly, you are going to get less than optimal results. You can control one and not the other. I took the opportunity to see what I could be doing incorrectly by rereading some info I had before and I am pretty excited to see I was making some critical errors. I am excited, because these are easily fixable problems and I can improve my play. It deteriorated a bit, which happens from time to time. The important thing, besides trying your best to not let it happen, is to see when it is happening and to take steps to counter the less than optimal play.

Rut

Edit: Blogspot is the worst for format.

I can't seem to pull myself out of this rut I am currently in. Everytime I think I am going to snap out ofit, I get hit with the cooler/variance hands. I played two sessions yesterday and in the first I finished up 2 BIs, happy about my play and how thigns were going, it felt like things were getting back on track and then book, I play a second session, where I get the following hands - for a BI each - in a span of about 10 minutes:

- KK < AA
- KQ < QQ on KQxtt
- QQ < AA on AQx
- AK < KK on Axx (I checked to induce and he shoved with the flush redraw)

The good news is that these hands weren't played poorly and I do feel I played okay for the session, just frustrating to not see any results this month. I know, I know, results orientation, it doesn't mean anything, just was hoping to get some debt paid off before kid #2 comes along. Al I can do is improve and I watched a few videos recently to see if I could learn a thing or two I may be doing wrong. Basically I need to realize everyone isn't always playing back at me (a feeling change more than a play change, confidence is important), and I need to go back to being tigher OOP, it is too tough to overcome playing pots OOP with a marginal range. I was loosening my range due to players in the blinds at certain tables, but getting called and playing pots OOP is makign this not worth it I think. I will keep working on my game and trying to improve and we'll see what happens.

On a brighter note, I will post some pics of my garage progress, it will be finished tonight, which is pretty exciting.

My Second Favorite Team

Montreal. Go Habs Go! :-)

Yeah Bitches

I solved the problem I was having with the electrical circuitry in the garage! I went to the hardware store and picked up a bag of slightly larger wire nuts. The electrician used wire nuts that should have been big enough without problem, but for some reason the wires were having trouble staying in the wire nut. I got a step bigger and they stayed in perfectly. Apparently the GFI sensed an open ground wire circuit and just blew every time I tried to get the wiring situated. Now that problem no longer exists and life is good. I have to repair the drywall on the outside of a couple receptable boxes and then it is on to mudding the walls! I am hoping to have it done by Saturday, including priming and painting and then I can head up to Asheville, NC for the night. My friends are playing a show up there and I haven't seen them in a while, so I will listen to some good music, drink some (a lot) beers, and enjoy an evening of relaxation after finishing the garage. Yippee!

Back From Vacation

It's back to the grind now and I have not been welcomed back well. Played 4k hands today and dropped 2 BIs. I know this is nothing out of the ordinary, to have played 8k hands for the month and be down 2 BIs, but it has been due to some really terrible running, so that makes me happy. I have watched a few videos as I have felt stagnant and I have felt like I have not been playing well, and that has helped me regain some confidence. It is nights like tonight though that are incredibly frustrating, because I lost almost 7 BIs in non SD winnings. I was constantly getting raised off of my hands. I have nights like this fairly frequently throughout the month. It is like 75% of days throughout the month I am coasting along and not doing too badly with non SD winnings, hovering around 0 and then a day comes when I just get shelled. It seems like a problem, but I am not sure what the solution is. Hopefully some stufy will help, I am slightly annoyed that I am not demolishing this limit like I should be doing. Maybe I am overestimating myself, but it is a bit frustrating that my winrate has been around 2.5 ptbb/100 for every limit I play. It seems if I can win at that rate at 200nl, then I should be able to get 5 ptbb fairly easily at 50nl, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I digress.

Vacation was awesome. It was my first time to the beach in about 20 years. I just soaked it in and enjoyed the Hell out of it. We really made it a point to just relax and do whatever whenever and not have too many things to see. Jas did want to make sure we got to the Aquarium, but that is only one thing over the course of almost 5 days. I wanna go back so badly. lol Jacob loved the ocean, especially the waves. I would take him out and hold him where it would be waste deep if he was sitting down. He spalshed and splashed, he loves the water. He'd laugh like crazy too when the waves hit him. I made sure any waves that would hit his head, I would lift him out of the water. I don't want anything bad to happen, since he is still so small and can't really know to hold his breath and whatnot. As I said before, friend me on facebook if you wanna see pics, I am too lazy to post them anymore.

I gotta get back at it with the garage too. I have pics of that on facebook as well. Progress is going, much slower than I had anticipated. But I wanna do it right and that takes time.

The Wings. Eesh. Games 1 and 2 had some of the worst officiating I had seen. Game 3 was called well and the Wings just flat out collapsed in the 3rd period and San Jose played well and stole that game. It really irked me to see Detroit playing so poorly in that game when it was clearly a much needed win. Game 4 was a rout for Detroit and they sit down 3 games to 1. I am hoping they can win Game 5 in San Jose at 10 pm, but we'll see. If they win that game, I really think the odds that they win the series is about 50%. Game 6 would be at the Joe and anything can happen in a game 7. I don't think the Sharks want to see it get to Game 6 for this reason. The Red Sox were down 3-0 against the much favored Yanks a few years back and came back to win the series, anything can happen in sports and this is the Red Wings after all, the best franchise in all of sports. I don't think they will come back, but honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if it did happen. One thing I will say about Sharks fans from what I have seen on forums, they seem to be pretty good fans. It is too bad that good conversations about hockey get sidetracked by silly Penguins trolls, happens every game. They talk shit about the economy and city of Detroit and not about hockey either, it gets pretty annoying. If you don't believe me, just start going through any Wings-Sharks forums, I am not making this shit up. It is pretty annoying. Oh well.

Softball started out well, going 2-3 with a HR and 2 RBIs and a run, but two weeks ago, I slumped a nd had a bad game, going 1-3 with a RBI. Should have been 1-4, but you don't count ABs that are sacrifices. Gotta hit the cages and fix that flaw in my swing, I think I am not staying down enough through my swing and as a result, I keep getting under it. Can of corn ftl.

Word to Your Mother

Wow, it seems like no one - including myself - really updates their blogs too often anymore. It is a little interesting that people seem to be updating them less frequently right around the same time period. I have been fairly busy with life, but still have gotten some pokers in. Here is an update for ya.

Poker
Poker has been a struggle lately. I am trying to figure out why the results are lacking. People on the forums are blaming the games, that they are getting tougher, and I just don't agree. Yes there are mroe regs, but they all suck. At least at the limit I play. But there are still ample amounts of recreational players, so it isn't that I don't think. I think I have regressed. I have become too passive. My red line is horrific. I mean, it isn't my goal to have a sexy red line, but it is my goal to not bleed money out of my ass. It is really really bad at the moment. I am looking into ways to fix it when I can and am making a document with notes on various regs to help me exploit their leaks. Things will improve for me in the future. In the meantime, it is nice that volume is high enough and that with rakeback, I am making $25/hr. Mot too many people can say their hobby nets them a solid profit better than many people's salaries.

House

Holy crap. I thought I had a relatively easy task I decided to do, which is to finish drywalling the garage. Code only requires a house to have the part of a garage attached to the house to have drywall, for fire reasons. So of course manufacturers trim cost by not doing what they don't have to do. I really want to have a nice finished garage and also, since we have a bonus room above the garage, it can;t hurt to have the supports below it drywalled and insulated. How this isn't mandatory when you have a bonus room above a garage is beyond me. I digress.

Well, the electrician was incredibly lazy. I had never even dealt with diring anything until dealing with my garbage disposal recently and even I know that the guy did a piss poor job. He has the wire on the outside of the drywall in the garage which is beyond me. Maybe it is the fault of someone else in the construction, as far as when he was able to come out and do the electrical work, but I highly doubt it. And he simply stapled the wire to the unfinished side of the garage. Now, I am not going to undo all the drywall that is finished, I can't be bothered to do so. However, what I am doing, I want to be done the right way. So I had to undo most of the wiring in the garage and drill holes through the studs and run the wiring inside the walls like it is supposed to be. That took a fair amount of time to do and was something I did not anticipate having to do.

Once finished, I also then had to install all of the insulation. Even breaking the job into two days and wearing jeans, a long-sleeve shirt (in the summer, fml), a mask, glasses, and a hat, I still felt the itchiest I have ever been in my entire life. That is a task that if it never has to be done again, it will be too soon. lol Anyways, that is about where I stand now. I did manage to rent a truck from Lowe's and buy all the drywall sheets I will need last night and I will be starting to put up the drywall tonight with my nephew. Once done, I still have loads of work to do. I have to put up 3 layers of mud for all fo the joints and that should take some time, as I have never done it before and want to make sure I do it right. I have heard many good tips from people at Lowe's and also reading a bunch online, so that should help. You have to wait for it to fully dry, so that is about 3 days worth of work right there. Finally I will need to prime and paint the entire garage, which will also take a couple of days.

I leave for vacation Sunday and come back Thursday, so I am expecting this to be finished maybe around May 9th or so. The main reason I did this, besides wanting to do a project and learn some things and make my garage look nicer, is because we will be having a lot of company in town in mid June for Jacob's birthday. We are going to make it an outside affair, but if it rains, we don't have a big enough house for 40ish people. But if we can use a nice finished garage as well ... we will be fine! So what I did is basically ensure that it will be sunny on June 12th. :lol: That is okay though!

Jacob
He is growing super fast. I try to update facebook with pictures fairly regularly, so just search me if you have an account, some of you already have me added. Then you can see pics if you are interested. I post them there, because the family loves to see pictures. It seems like he is on hyper speed for learning right now. 6 weeks ago he could not crawl. Not he crawls extremely well, pulls himself up easily, and walks with his little push toy (not sure what it is called). He says mama, but not dada yet. He is an oinker as well! The kid eats and eats! He really is all about mandarin oranges, mac and cheese, yogurt (though we think he may be lactose intolerant, since he spits up a lot with yogurt, we stopped giving it to him lately), and waffles. Wow, does this kid love waffles!! lol His birthday is fast approaching, as is the due date for the next little one. Not sure if I posted it, but baby #2 will be a girl, and we are going to name her Jordan. I thought about naming her Dodgyken Ladymuck Bazclef Luckysob Malfaire Riverrock Timm, but the wife opposed that idea. Go figure.

Other
Thinking about redoing some of the master bathroom sometime in the near future. The good news is that it is something that can easily be done in a week. It has vinyl floors I believe, which I despise. It is extremely soft and looks cheap. So I want to remove the flooring and install ceramic tiles. It looks nice, is extremely easy to clean, but the downside is how incredibly fragile it is. I also want to repaint, as I think it is ugly right now, a yellow color. I also would like to replace some of the hardware int he bathroom, like towel racks and the toilet paper holder, and also the light fixture and mirror. The good news is the sink, tub, and toilet all are fine and look fine, so this really is a pretty minimal remodeling job. Jason, fly out here and help me will ya? Hey, dodgy redid the floors in his bathroom I believe, yuo fly out and help too! lol

We go on vacation to the beach Sunday-Thursday. I am looking forward to relaxing like crazy. It's gonna be nice.

That's all for now, I'll probably post again in like a week. I'm out.

Brutal

The last 6 days have been God awful. If I can lose, I will find a way to do so. I was doing well this month and then the last 6 days hit and have erased it all. I reviewed hands left and right and can't find many mistakes and feel I am playing pretty well overall. So I will continue to chug along and grind out some hands and hopefully it will turn around.

It was a run bad day all around when I barely lost to my brother in a fantasy baseball league. I have had the 5th most and 3rd most points in the entire 16-team league the first two weeks of the year and have a record of 0-2 to show for it. Variance ftl. And the Wings. Eesh. They just don't look very good so far this post season. They looked good in game 1 and lost. They looked marginal in game 2 and won. They looked awful in game 3 and got owned. They need better goaltending and defense or the team and fans won't have to think about the potential for playing Chicago or San Jose or a potential Washington or Pitt matchup - because they won't make it out of round 1. Things need to change in a hurry.

I Love It

I love having an entire month's worth of work undone by variance and coolers and lucky fucking morons. It's getting really fucking old.

Life and Poker and Good Music!

Here are a couple of videos from the band, The Reign of Kindo. Skip it if you don't like jazzy music. It isn't my usual style, but I really, really like these guys. They are the same guys from a group you may know called This Day & Age. It is weird, because it's the same lineup, but TROK is jazzy and TDAA is kinda best described as emo. lol Both bands are good though. Here are two songs by TROK. The first is just a flat out awesome song that shows how amazing they are at what they do. The second song is interesting, because the music is calming and relaxing and the lyrics, well, just check it out. First song is called "Just Wait" and the second is called "Breathe Again".

Had my first softball game of the year today. I am playing in a church league this year, very low key, and today's game was fun. The team is awful and will most likely be at the bottom end of the league, because we have a significantly smaller congregation that the other churches. It's fun though, which is what matters. We lost today something like 15-5 and most of those runs allowed could have been reduced had we played better team defense. I am out in right center and I did okay, given my size. I need to shed some pounds though, for reasons other than softball, but that will help considerably. At the plate I did okay today. I went 2-3, with an RBI single and a solo HR. My only out came in the 3rd when the left fielder made a leaping grab into the fence, so I basically just missed my second jack of the day. Fun times, fun times.

The Wings are down 1-0 in their series versus the Coyotes. I am not worried though, I stayed up to watch Game 1 and it was clear that all but the last 10 minutes of the game was completely owned by Detroit. Phoenix was 28th in the NHL on the pwer play and they were 3/4 Wednesday. Detroit was in the top ten in the penalty kill all year as well. The Wings also only scored on 1/6 PPs. My gut feeling is that other than special teams, Detroit killed that game, so I still expect the same result that I predicted - Wings in 6. I just think they will shore up the errors they were making on the PK and improve their play to where this series shouldn't be an issue. We'll find out when they play Game 2 tomorrow night.

I have a few things on my plate before we leave for vacation Surfside Beach, just south of Myrtle Beach) in early May. Saturday I need to replace the garbage disposal, should be loads of fun. * rolls eyes* I also want to finish off the garage. When the house was built, they only put drywall up on about 1/3 of the garage. They had to do this due to fire code. I want to finish it off, prime, and paint the garage and make it look much nicer. I estimate it shouldn't cost too much to do, because drywall is cheap, as is primer, paint, and drywall screws. My guess is something in the neighborhood of $350 total. I definitely want it done before June 12th. This is Jacob's first birthday party, which we will have in the backyard. But it'd be nice to have the garage as space in the event that it rains. We could use the house and the garage.

Poker is going well enough I suppose. I am not getting the volume I want to get, just about 20k hands this month. That's only about 20 hours roughly, and I would have liked something more like 25-30 hours. It's okay though, because I have been busy with other things and not spending the time just dicking around on the internet. Since it isn't wasted time, I am okay with the lowered volume.

Update on 4/13

Well, it has been a very busy month. Seems this is most likely the norm for my life from now on. This is a good thing though, as it is filled with doing things I love to do. I still play a decent amount of poker, just nothing like what I used to do. I also think that I may end up scrapping my monthly goal for volume. I just don't have the desire to really nail that goal. If I want to spend time with my kid or learning a song ont he guitar, I will do that instead and not feel like I am obligated to play to meet a goal that doesn't really matter in the scheme of things anyways. Now this isn't to say that I am gonna play like 10 hours a month or anything, but if I don't meet 50k or 60k hands and I end up with 40k, that is fine. It isn't my job after all and is something I just enjoy doing. Not worrying as much has made poker much more enjoyable as well, which is always a good thing.

Jacob

Jacob is awesome and is growing and learning so much. He is a crawling machine now and can pull himself up to standing position using couches and people and whatnot. He is just amazing me with how quickly he learns things and I get a lot of joy out of spending time with him. I will post some pics at some point. He is also taking swimming lessons, which is really cool to see as well. His first birthday is June 10th, and we are having a party for him on the 12th. A lot of family is coming to town, which is going to be great and I am looking forward to it. However, as a result, I have a ton of thigns to do before then, inside and outside the house, so my time constraints have just been amplified.

Guitar

I still suck, but I am learning. Loads of chords and scales being learned and I am trying to learn various songs as well. The last two I have learned (am learning) are Nirvana's version of "Oh Me" and Weezer's "Say it Ain't So". Awesome songs. It is a load of fun to play the guitar and I definitely love to relax with my acoustic outside, even though I have only been able to do it twice so far. Just been perfect weather for it.

Tigers

5-2 to start the year. 5-2, despite our ace pitcher looking like he forgot how to pitch at times and has had two poor outings. Walks are bad, they lead to base runners. Base runners lead to mistakes being amplified. Case in point, 2 walks the other day after a hit load the bases and the only truly poor pitch he made the whole inning? The one mistake? The pitch was crushed for a grand slam. Walks lead to bigger mistakes, gotta get those down. That is why OBP is so important. Tha being said, I can't imagine Verlander not rebounding, he is toog ood not to do so. It is early in the season and he always starts out poorly anyways. Nothign to worry about ... yet.

Also, sorry, West is right. 4 hour games suck. Too many timeouts by batters and walking aroudn the mound by pitchers. The old days didn't have pitchers especially doing this nearly as often. Now West was wrong to single out the Yankees and Red Sox, because the problem is universal to all of baseball. But he is right - these prima donnas need to stop acting like every single pitch needs an 80-minute routine beforehand. ffs, just play baseball!!

Hockey

Ah yes, post season hockey, the best time of the year. The only sporting event that come close to the excitement of playoff hockey imo is March Madness. (For all of you non-North Americans out there, I am sure there are events that are just as, or more exciting, but if I don't watch it enough, I can't possibly know this, so I am not knocking your favorite sports!) I love playoff hockey. Just something about the intensity level that gets picked up and it is just so thrilling to watch. I watch a load of games this time of year, many of which do not include the Red Wings.

Speaking of the Wings, wow are they hot. Finally healthy, and since they had so many injuries, that means some of their key players will be rested and ready to go. The key to a deep playoff run for the Wings imo is in their defense. Howard is still green and has no playoff experience. Detroit needs to get his confidence rolling, by making life easier on him by finishing checks, doing a great job of poke checking, blocking shots, and just geenralyl making life Hell on the opposition trying to score. If they can get his confidence going and make life easier on Howard, then they have a chance for a deep run. His inexperience does make me a little nervous for them though. Here are my predictions for round 1:

Western Conference:

• #1 San Jose over #8 Colorado in 6
• #2 Chicago over #7 Nashville in 7
• #3 Vancouver over #6 Los Angeles in 5
• #5 Detroit over #4 Phoenix in 6

Eastern Conference:

• #1 Washington over #8 Montreal in 4
• #7 Philadelphia over #2 New Jersey in 7
• #3 Buffalo over #6 Boston in 5
• #4 Pittsburgh (puke) over #5 Ottawa in 6

Poker

Poker has been going well for me since my day of run-bad. I have ran better and people like to give away money which is nice. I have focused on trying hard to value bet thin and not worry about value cutting myself, this is continuing to be my biggest leak, and it was before as well. I don't value bet thin enough. I think I am doing a better job of it now though. I am really feeling like I am playing very well.

I am going to be making notes on regs away from the table and forming in depth plans to battle them to increase my winrate. I can do this away from the table and make a pretty cool sheet with all of the important information on it for easy reference too. This is something that can only help me, as regs tend to play a very very formulaic game when playing rush and don't adjust well at all. They don't (myself included) adjust very well in geenral at lower stakes as ti is, and just do so even less when playign rush, so I think this will be very beneficial to do.

Hope everyone is enjoying the springtime!!

Fucking Awesome

I love days when nothing ever goes right, every hand you lose. Just love them. I love how you lose every flip and every time you are a huge favorite, you still lose anyways. I love it when one day erases a whole fucking month's worth of work. Sometimes I really fucking hate poker.

You Wish You Were This Good At What You Do ... So Do I.

This will be mostly nonpoker content. Stop reading if poker is your thing. Hahaha.

I started learning the above song last night. It is one of my favorites and Hendrix is flat out amazing. I haven't had much time to play guitar, just like I haven't had much time to play poker. I have been pretty busy doing other things. However, the time I have had available to play guitar I have spent almost exclusively working on the pentatonic scale and learning the blues, which are entwined to a large degree. The 7th chords used in the blues really do add some color to songs, which is cool. I have a book that I am using to help learn the blues and I am taking it very seriously, making sure I have each lesson down, understood, memorized by learning the reasons why, before moving on to the next lesson. Like anything in life, there is no point in moving on until you truly grasp the lesson at hand. It is especially important with beginners. Learn progressions and scales and chords and then think about learning something else. It's no different than focusing on truly understanding pot before learning implied odds before learning REM. Same idea.

I bought a new guitar yesterday morning, since I got a sick deal on it. I was trying to hold off until my birthday in June. But guess what? Fail. It is an acoustic by Ibanez that I can add to my collection, which has two electric guitars, an Epiphone and a Fender. The Fender sucks, because it is a bundle pack starter guitar. Here are pics.

Other things have been mostly house and kids related. I primed and painted the upstairs room a pastel green, which will be a play room for the kids. It is spacious, so it will allow them to crawl around and go nuts. Good times.

I also built them a toy chest. It did not turn out close to as good as I wanted, but it will do I suppose. I will put pics of it up when I get a chance. This has taken a ton of my time, but it is pretty cool. The front of it is a chalkboard. I used chalkboard paint on the front to make the front a chalboard. I rounded off edges with a buddy's router, and Jasmine needs to make the cushion for the top of the toy chest. I added some safety features, since I am a nerd. The front has an area under the lid cut away and rounded off, so they can't pinch their fingers. It also features slow-closing hinges so they don't hit their head (hit it hard at least, hahaha).

I did get a round of golf in. Considering how little I get to play anymore, I was pretty happy with my play. My score sucked, I shot an 87, but my ball striking was not poor. I just couldn't hole a putt. My chipping was actually pretty good as well. Story of the round. 545-yard par 5 12th went as follows:

• [x] Hit 320-yard drive
• [x] Hit a beautiful draw 225-yard 3-iron over water to 7 feet
• [ ] Get putt to the hole

It was a downhill slick putt, but ffs, get it to the hole. It is okay to run it 2 feet by. It is not okay to leave it 6 inches short.

NHL playoffs will start soon. No one wants to play the red hot Wings. they struggled with loads of injuries all year long and would still be fighting for a 2-seed in the pathetic East. Yowza.

Baseball has started. Red Sox suck. Go Tigers.

March Results

Minus the Bear comes out with a new album May 4th, I am so stoked about that. Here is one of the new songs off of that album:

March was rough, worst month since starting Rush, where I did not get in near as many hands as I would have liked and I also ran absolutely awful. For most of the month, I felt like this:

I finished the month last night in style, running 44 into 99 on a 499 flop and have Qx lose to 88 on Q8x 8 Q. Not too often you can run a boat into quads twice in one session without a tripled up board. So it goes I suppose. I did get a video review done from a friend though and I have some things to work on in my game. I also set it up now so I import first into PT3 to use the very good HUD that PT3 has for Rush and then it imports into HM, so I can use HM to study. PT3 sucks for studying.

I didn't get near the hands this month, because I have spent the bulk of the last week painting the kids' playroom and also making a toy chest for them. It turned out okay I suppose. It would have been better, but it is very difficult to make legitimate straight cuts without having a table saw or anything like that. My tools were a circular saw, a jigsaw, and a router. Not the best tools in the world for making accurate and straight cuts, but it did good enough for now I guess.

Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS)

I have a friend whose mother is suffering from Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). I am joining her for a walk on April 24th to support ALS fundraising. If you would like to make a donation, it would be more than appreciated and simply click on the link here.

Thank you!

Shite Day

I love days where I drop 10 BIs. Nothing I can do about most of it. Coolers and suckouts galore. Just call with K9s 100 bs deep versus me in 3bet pots, you'll hit and get paid. Or limp T3 so when the flop is T63, we can get it in against my 66 and you can hit a ten on the turn, fun stuff. My favorite by far was a mental error where I meant to type in 2.35 and typed in 23.5. That was cool when I got shoved on and had to fold. fml I love days where my winrate for the month gets chopped in half, yet I never seem to have days where I win 10 BIs. lol

Took several days off to do some stuff on the kids' playroom we are making. It'd be nice to take more time off of poker, but if I want to continue to buy things for that room and pay off debt, it isn't an option.

On a bright note, Michigan State is gonna lose to Tennessee tomorrow, so that is nice. WIn or lose though, they beat Ohio State, which makes me thrilled and the first Elite Eight appearance ever for the Vols kinda makes me feel like we are playing with house money. In any event, Go Vols!

BBV

Brag: Jacob said his first word today, which was mama. Pretty exciting, he is learning loads of things all of the sudden. I taught him how to give kisses, which is basically him taking his face and putting it on your cheek, it is pretty cute. He learned to crawl and said his first word all in like 10 days. Too awesome.

Beat: Since the first thing out of his mouth was not "Ship the cookies", I do not get half of dodgy's bankroll. Damn.

Variance: Redoing a couple of rooms in the house to prepare for baby #2 kills poker time.

"I said you LOVE the cock. I must be the craftiest motherfucker alive."

Nice repeated cross checks from Sidney Crosby to Zetterberg after the game. Stay classy Crosby.

"I can't believe I'm gonna get ..."

some pussy for stealin' the monkey. (laughs) Stealin' the little monkey. Man, if I woulda known that, I would have been stealin' monkeys since I was like, seven and shit."

Pretty solid week. Not happy with the results, but hey, variance happens. I made some plays where I think I should have folded instead of calling, specifically on the river, so I need to shore that up quickly, since it is the most expensive street obviously and all mistakes there are magnified.

My volume was lacking for the week, my lowest since I started playing rush. But I had many many things to do this week. We bought some new patio furniture and I bought a wet vac. I cleaned up my man room, since the dog is often in here with me and he has been making it quite dirty. Worked like a dream. I did a lot of cleaning Thursday through Saturday morning and a lot of housework too. Just been busy. This week should be lighter.

Edit: Played another session since I was feeling good about my game and was awake and whatnot. Promptly dropped over 4 BIs in the session to have a - 7 BI day and a losing week. KK into AA, QQ into AA, QQ into a backraised 88, of course he hits quads on the flop. More and more I don't feel like typing. It is so fucking frustrating to have a great month going and then have it ruined in a couple of fucking days.

"You Don't Know Morris Day and the Time?!"

"In a world gone mad, we will not spank the monkey, but the monkey will spank us."

Week 2 was an interesting week. I felt I played pretty well for the most part and only made a few mistakes. Unfortunately I cannot control the results, so those are what they are. My volume was low again, but again, I put in about 20 hours of OT this week, so it is to be expected. I am a bit surprised I got in as many hands as I did, because I did get a good amount of family time in and we had our church bowling league Saturday night as well, which always takes a few hours and I had my fantasy baseball draft for my brother's league tonight as well, which took about 3 hours. I will post my drafted team in the next few days for those of you who care (read: maybe Rasputin).

I also got my new guitar in the mail and picked up a solid bedroom amp from Guitar Center Thursday. I will post pics soon. It is amazing and every bit as beautiful and amazing sounding as I thought it would be. It is an Epiphone Les Paul Custom with a silverburst finish. It sounds as nice as it looks. The one thing that surprised me a fair amount though was not the sound. I expected it to sound better than the shitty Fender starter I have, but it is easier to play too, which is awesome.

Another good week of life in the books, hopefull no OT this week will allow me to get in some more volume and possibly get back on pace for 60k hands for the month. We'll see.

"What the Fuck is the Internet?!?"

Classic ...

"So, you think I could get a little kiss for good luck?

Think I could get a little blowjob for good luck?"

Week 1 is in the books. Unfortunately, I did not do what I said I would to improve this month, which was limit fuckaround time. I have a monthly goal of 60k hands. I am on pace for a touch over 53k hands. As I said before, it is fine to not reach this goal if I have a legit reason for it, such as working OT or spending loads more time with family than in a normal week or being out of town or something coming up out of the blue. And while I had a good day today spending some time at the park with the family, and I did work an extra 14 hours of OT this week to make some progress on a time critical task, I still did not limit fuckaround time. I got in about 12k hands, roughly 12 hours of play, and to be on pace, I needed to play another 2 hours. I could have got that in, despite the OT. Hopefully week 2 is better as far as that goes. I control this myself, no one else does and it is only I who can resolve this issue. Next week will be better hands down.

It was a good week, and I feel I am playing very well right now. I made a few changes to my game that are yielding great results and as long as > 50% of the field is recreational players, my formula for success is fairly evident. Over my last 50k hands, my winrate is about 5 ptbb. It is not a large enough sample, but I do think that I can easily take from that that I can expect ~ 50k hands per month and maybe 3.5 ptbb and once you include rakeback, I can have essentially variance-free (month-to-month) winnings each month in excess of $2,300. I hope for more, but we shall see. I did not do that last month, but the first week of less than optimal play is the cause of that.

Life is good overall, I can't complain. I am looking forward for when days like today are the norm (mid 60s, sunny). It was great to grill out some dogs and play catch with some family at the park today. We aired out the house too, opening up all the windows during the day. I loooove when we get to do that! I know it may seem silly, but little things like opening windows in the house on a nice day really help me to appreciate how good my life is and to enjoy the little things.

Hope all is well with you all.

"Y'know, I don't get you, Justice..

...You used to be into all this girl stuff. Stealing, boning, blowing shit up, and now you're like this little priss with a conscience. It's really a fucking drag."

Well, today was quite a good day. I left work a touch early to eat some good wings at BW3, then headed over to Guitar Center to mess around with an acoustic I want and some pedals just for fun. I tried to find an in-depth instructional book on blues, from beginner, and getting more advanced, but failed to find anything that seemed to have much value. Then I headed over to a baseball card shop and picked up a few singles for my Topps 2010 set, just need 3 more cards for series 1.

After that, I picked up Jacob from day care and met Jasmine at the OB-GYN. We had the second ultrasound and the good news is that everything seems to be progressing as expected. All 4 ventricles of the heart look solid, the heart beat was strong, all parts of the brain were developing properly. 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes, everything is checking out to be a-ok. I will get some pictures up of the ultrasound sometime this weekend. The ultrasound technician also told us that she did not see "any boy parts". So I am almost certainly having a baby girl! This is pretty exciting for the misses and myself. If it is indeed a girl (when they say boy, they are next to never wrong, but sometimes they are wrong predicting a girl. If you think about it for half of a second, you can see why this is obviously true.), then we will be expecting Jordan Alyse on July 26th. Normally I am not a fan of unusual spellings of names, I would prefer Elise, but there is a reason for the spelling. Jas's mom was named Alicia (not sure if that was the spelling), so she wanted to use the a for that reason. To me, this is a good reason for an unusual spelling, so I am okay with that.

We are definitely really excited!

"What is Your Damage Little Boy? You've Got a Sick and Twisted World Perspective."

This made me lol.

You are the ones who are the ball lickers!

From now until the foreseeable future, my blog post titles will consist of lines from the best comedy movie of all time, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. That is all.

February Results

I am not doing a weekly summary today, because the month ended and both posts seem redundant and silly. February was a good month. It was a busy month, which is good as it shows I can get the volume in most months like I want. I still had time for loads of family activities, learning guitar, and the gazillion other errands I had to do, and also deal with a computer virus from Hell and being sick as shit as well.

Rush has gone fairly well. I feel I didn't run that great (did have a nice ending to the month though) and still made close to $2k including RB. As I said, I like having essentially variance free money (at least month-to-month) to help remove debt and get my family in a better spot. Hopefully this sticks around and isn't just a fad, as I really like the way things are going. I rarely get upset anymore about poker-related issues. Volume is way up, since I can get in about 1,000 hands per hour. Things have settled out nicely.

I look to March to improve on a couple of problems with my game. I think I can really step it up and play even better. The real key to make this successful is to limit the fuck around time on the computer. That is true for everyone though, too many people waste far too much time doing random shit on the computer that is unproductive. That is fine, if it is how you want to spend your free time. But I doubt most people want to spend it that way. I'd rather spend it with my family, playing guitar, hopping on the bike (once we spring forward, 2 weeks!), or whatever your joys are in life.

I was able to withdrawal enough money this month both with my profits and withdrawing extra bankroll I don't need to completely pay off one card and make a dent in another. My goal is to pay off my two cards and the Dell payments and then I can reward myself. What will I get you ask? This beauty below. A beautiful Epiphone Les Paul Custom with a silverburst finish. What a work of art.

That basically sums things up. Here are the details of the month:

Sidney Crosby

is now the man in all of sports I officially love to hate more than anyone. If it wasn't bad enough that he got a cheap BS Cup title, since the NHL refuses to follow clearly defined rules, he scores the GW for Team Canada. Fuck Crosby. Fuck him up his stupid ass. Any other Canadian could have scored the GW and I would not be pissed off about it.

Haven't blogged in a while, figured I'd make a post about a few things. This is most likely a tl;dr with minimal poker content, not sure, we'll see.

- This link is funny.

- This video about that link is even funnier:

- People are complaining about Team Canada's women's hockey team celebration. So let me get this straight. They won the gold. They play women's hockey, so they don't play in the NHL and this is almost certainly the pinnacle of their careers. They are all young and really happy and excited. So they get their cameras and celebrate on the ice? After Team USA left the ice? After all the fans were gone? The arena was empty? They didn't have to drive anywhere? THey had some drinks? Okay, so wtf is the problem? This seems totally fine and acceptable and they never should have had to apologize for it. You don't wanna see that? Then win the fucking gold. Stop being pussies and realize that this is just young people having fun.

- Guitars are fun to play.

- I find out the sex of my next child on Wednesday.

- It is just two weeks until we spring forward an hour, which will allow enough light to hop on my bike again after work. I run hot in sun light?

- I really really want to upgrade to an Epiphone Les Paul Custom guitar, silverburst finish. I need to keep telling myself to pay off debt first.

- I can't stop playing that song above.

- Baseball season is coming soon. That means I get to cheer for 6 months for a shite Detroit TIgers team that does stupid things like trade away young hero Curtis Granderson since we don't have money for him and then we sign Damon, who is a lying sack of shit old fuck for more money than we would have paid Granderson and also sign Valverde for more money than Damon, when we traded for Schlereth, who could have closed. fml

- Poker has not been very good to me this month. However, since it is 50nl Rush, it means that A) I am still good enough even when running awful to profit and not lose and B) the stress is completely non-existent and my overall life is better. Life is good.

- I guess this wasn't really a tl;dr after all. But I probably still just wasted 5 minutes of your life you will never get back. You're welcome.

In Case You Were Wondering ...

I don't post daily results anymore and have deleted all prior blog posts of that nature. I thought it would be fun to see the volume each day and the fluctuations, but honestly it was just tedious and boring. I am sure no one found them interesting, as I thought only I would anyways. Plus, lately I have been running like complete super ultra mega death and I know no one wants to read boring posts about running like shit and bad beats. So I will post a weekly summary on Sundays and then during the week if anything interesting occurs, either in poker or in life.

Go USA!!

February Week 3 Report

I am going to give you some bew Minus the Bear for this post. They have a CD due out this year, which I expect to be beyond sick.

I am happy with this week. I feel I played very very well during the week and kept my emotions almost completely in control. The last 8k hands of the month I ran horrificly and I was able to really just brush it off, which was nice. Not that the details are releveant, but it was something like 8 BIs below EV and that doesn't obviously include coolers. These are to be expect though and the only time I tilted and had to stop playing was when I got slowrolled. That I think might piss me off forever. I know too that actions aren't instantaneous in rush poker, because there are a million things going on, but if you are playing for stacks on the river and need to call off the last $9, you don't request time and wait for it to get to 2 seconds before calling w/ T9 on a board of 87645r. I had 9x obv. I have been feeling like shit most of the week, but still able to play quite well, so that is nice.

Grunge Baby

I will leave you with this picture. Early 90s ftw.

February Week 2 Report

This week went well with respect to poker. I made a few changes that have really helped me improve my game. Some things that are done in the games I used to play just don't apply here to 50nl rush. Things are looing good as fare as that goes.

My volume was weak this week, but there were good reasons for this including major computer issues that are now okay, Valentine's Day, and my wife's birthday. Things will always pop up from time to time, but hopefully they won't be things that are just annoying like the computer issues.

February Week 1 Report

Things are going smoothly for the month as I am right on target for my 60 hours for the month. I expect that I might fall just short this month, as I may be busy during the weekends some this month. However, I do expect in future months to reach 60 hours with those 2-3 extra days. My calculations for RB were right on target at about $600-$700 per month. My winnings were not good at all this week due to 2 horrific days and just running poorly in general. I expect to see the results bounce back my way in the future so long as I keep playing well, trying to improve, and then the uncontrollable things fall in place.

Decision Time

I have made a decision. It wasn't an easy one to make, mostly because of that thing that drives many people, pride. I have decided to play exclusively Rush Poker.

I know many people who I associate with in the poker world will look at this and think this is a bad or weak decision. It took me a while to make this decision, because I had certain goals in poker I wanted to achieve, mainly being a solid MSNL regular. Doing the Rush Poker instead does feel a tiny bit like giving up and admitting defeat, which I despise more than anything. People who know me well know that I am an extremely competitive person, with as much desire to succeed as anyone else. I poured myself into poker, studying on my lunches at work and studying and playing while home. And tbh, I had the roll to play 400nl before I switched over to heads up, so maybe if I had just stayed on with 6max and never played HU I would be playing 400nl regularly right now. I don't regret the decision though, as it taught me a lot of things about poker and how to think differently about the game. But yeah, a part of me feels like I should not stop my quest for being a solid MSNL reg. But I also know that baby #2 is going to be here soon, which will essentially kill all chances at having the required time to be a MSNL reg, so ...

That being said, the numbers just cannot be denied. I do feel that playing 50nl 6max I can achieve a winrate of 5 ptbb/100. I did the timing on this and I can get in 60 hours of play in a month easily for the time being, maybe even in the future when baby #2 comes, who knows. This can be done easily with the bulk of the time being played on the weekend and would actually give me more available time per month to do things with my family and get in shape. 60 hours may seem like a lot, but I don't go out like I used to with friends anyways, and the wife and Jacob as is are usually asleep by 10 and 8:30 respectively. This gives me a fair amount of time in the evenings on the weekend to get hands in and I can do it some during the day as well. 4 hours a day Fri-Sun means getting just 3 hours in during the week, which seems very reasonable. It would also give me more days completely off of poker. The math works out to being about 1,000 hands per hour. That means 5 ptbb/100 plus rakeback calculated out to being approximately $3,600 per month. Even a modest 3 ptbb/100 with rakeback is about $2,400 per month of essentially variance free money. I do think 5 ptbb/100 is quite reasonable though.

Another benefit of doing this is that I have always struggled with my mental game. Hard as I try, I still sometimes in bad ruts see $ and not bbs. Does this qualify me as a poor player? Maybe so. But it is what it is and I still saw losing 3 flips as $600 and it sometimes was frustrating. It will never be that way with $150. Yet another good thing is the fact that I never have to table select, which takes time of course. So basically other than pride, I can't think of a single reason why I should not give this a try. The beautiful thing about poker is that if things change somehow, I can always go back to regular 6max games, nothing is blocking my options long term.

...

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Poker Sites, Give Up The Booty Please

After waiting for a total of about 5 weeks, I got my refund for my withdrawal the other day from FTP. They screw up everything and their customer service took forever to respond to me, quite frustrating. As a result a while back I cashed out money from Stars and it is taking forever too. This does NOT make me happy. At some point in the near future, I plan on opening a new checking account. I will do this at the local credit union to be used as my personal money account and using it to make withdrawals directly to my account instead of waiting for a paper check. Since I plan on doing this at a bank that is not the same bank as my where all my primary accounts are, it will only be an extremely minor convenience if they close my account a la Noel and others on 2+2.

I may have a new plan for poker, as I have such limited time anymore. We'll see how it goes, I may blog about it, I may not. But it allows me to make decent coin I believe while actually increasing my time outside of poker, which should be pretty cool.

I keep seeing NFL mock drafts where the Lions take Gerald McCoy out of Oklahoma. The draft every April is a Lion's fan Super Bowl tbh. I wish we had won just one more game and drafted like 4th, as I could see Detroit selecting Eric Berry, my boy from Tennessee. Berry is easily the best DB I have ever seen play. The comparisons to Ed Reed aren't really accurate as he is so much better than Reed. I have never seen a safety basically become a shutdown safety. But that is what he is. He is a playmaker, but I see teams just not throwing in his direction of the field, it insane. Despite that, he still nearly broke the record for most INT returns yards in a career, despite leaving as a junior. He is amazing, I am still praying he goes to Detroit, though it is highly unlikely as they have a good SS and need line help (amongst many other things). He hits like John Lynch in his prime, ball hawks like Ed Reed, and can double as a shutdown corner type player, similar to 1997 Charles Woodson. He is a sicko. For anyone wanting to know just how valuable an elite safety is, check out how Pittsburgh's defense performed this year without Polamalu.

Steadily improving with respect to playing the guitar. My fingers on my left hand are starting to toughen up, like all good little boys who practice get. Been listening to loads of Dinosaur Jr. lately, they were always so underrated.

Computer Fixed

Yesterday I was trying to resolve my computer woes and I managed to solve the problem. I saw a cool wesbite that ahd video tutorials on how to remove virus issues from computers two nights ago before giving up and going to bed and was going to try that and then if that did not work, Ian was cool enough to send me a few links I was going to look at.

There was a piece of software that was suppose to be great for handling the virus I had (worm.win32.netsky) that I used the first day of attacking the issue. I tried it and it failed. I tried it again and the virus rendered the software useless and brought up some fake security called Internet Security 2010. For some reason it disappeared when I rebooted my machine in safe mode to try to use a tutorial to solve the issue. I decided to run malware bytes and then restart the machine again in safe mode and try to use a flash drive to install and run the software I found online to remove this virus. Well not only did it not bring up the problems like it did before, but it eliminated my issues with the virus after finding a few cases! I am not sure why it worked after the other time it did not work, but I am not going to question it, just being grateful I am no longer affected.

JamesMa or Grindcore on tap for the lunch video of the day, not sure which I will watch. Most likely the JamesMa video.

Virus - fml

I got a virus this morning on my desktop from www.nfl.com. Shocking as A) this is not a shady site, B) I have software to prevent this shit from happening, C) this filthy fuck of a virus is from 2004, so why this got beyond my antivirus protection is beyond me, and D) I was using Google Chrome, the supposed nuts in antivirus and adware and spyware resistence. Less than 24 hours after using Google Chrome, I get hit. >.<

I spent about 8 hours on this problem tonight and have made exactly no progress. I sit here typing this from my laptop, so at least I am not without internet connection, which will be a basic requirement to solve this problem. This is definitely a frustrating problem, hopefully I can find the answer in the next few days and not have to shell out loads of money or lose everything on my computer's hard drive in order to fix this problem.

I was supposed to talk to a friend tonight about some coaching stuff, I sure am glad I gave him the heads up that I had this problem and was unsure when it would be fixed. So to you I say, I am still in virus limbo and am unsure when I will get this solved, we can either talk later or just drop me an email if you like.

Burgleflickle.

Another Week in the Books

Another week is in the books and this was a tough one. I really had a bad day on Saturday, the worst of my playing so far, dropping 10 BIs. I went over most hands with Rasputin, who was kind enough to offer some advice. There were only a few hands that were debatable in his opinion and I then took those hands to baz last night and he said one of the hands was standard and the other I should have shoved instead of check/calling it off on the river, but the end result was the same. Of course, the play I made still sucked, but it is nice to learn from a mistake and not have it cost you any money, as either way I lose the stack.

• Mental Game: C. It was good for most of the week, but how I felt after Saturday was not good. I do feel I played fairly well until the very end of the last session and stayed focused. I took frequent breaks throughout the day and felt like I was playing well. I should have stopped earlier though, despite having limited time to play, because losing 10 BIs made me feel like I forgot how to play poker. At least it was nice to know when reviewing hands the next day that I still agreed with almost every play I made. It isn't easy to win when you lose with flopped flushes, sets, and you lose with boats on once paired boards, but the negative mindframe caused by a big losing day can lead to poor play and it is important to do what you can to always be in a good mind frame. The only reason I get a C here and not a worse grade is because of the good work I did earlier in the week in this area.
• Studying: B. I watched a couple of videos, posted hands and responded to hands on the leggo forums, and did a sweat with Jason. (Side note: The rude and sarcastic replies to hands on leggo are making me feel like it is 2+2. Maybe it is just me being old, but I grow tired of the disrespectful young players that compromise most people in these forums.). I feel like I am making strides in my game, but still have loads to improve upon. I also am starting to agree with baz's thoughts on videos. I watched the latest 100nl video from Clayton on Leggo this weekend and really felt I gained absolutely nothing from the video. HH videos are the nuts and I never see them on Leggo and don't see them often on DC. I know Jason has moved a HM database before from one machine to another. Dude, how did you do that without removing all the hands from the database? If anyone else knows how to do this, please tell me in the comments box (which is fixed now I believe). I think going over hands and lines from myself and other regs will really do well to improve my game. That would be a good route to pursue and see if that aids in my development.
• Technical Play: A-. Thought a lot more about various plays and bet sizes this week. I got some people to make some pretty poor plays based on inducing with my bet sizing, which was really cool. I made a much better effort to make notes and use them to my advantage. And hands I thought were potentially poorly played by me were deemed not so by some good players, so that gives me some confidence.
• Focus: A-. My focus was really good this week, despite the poor grade in the mental game area. I buckled down and made good notes and observations, I also did very well in thinking about the optimal plays against people as well. I hopeto continue this and build upon it too.

One thing that really helped me as well was a good point made to me by Rasputin. One of the reasons my swings seem to last so long is the low volume I obtain relative to other players who play for a living. Many people get in the same amount of hands in one month that I do in three, so if they have alosing month, it is the same as my having 3 losing months. It makes a lot of sense and I never thought of it that way, which is interesting.

Overall, it was a good week in that it opened my eyes up to some better ways to improve potentially. I am going to talk to whiteheatsyd sometime this week as well about some stuff that he thinks could help me improve, which is good news and something I am excited about. I will improve my play and seek any method I can to do so. I am thinking of getting coaching again as well. It can be a bit difficult to find a good coach who operates on my time schedule, but the reality is that I do need coaching and have to just search hard to find a good one. I am not sure when I will get it though. I want a good coach to really solidify me as a good winner at 200nl. I am playing 100nl now due to roll constraints from a bad stretch and withdrawing a lot of money. Getting a 100nl coach will be primarily a waste of my time I think, I need someone who thinks about the game at a higher level. As much as I question myself in bad stretches, I really do know deep down inside that I am a good enough player to beat 200nl, just not at the clip I would like. Most likely I will be waiting abotu a month to restore some of my roll and then hiring someone along the lines of jk3a. I have always enjoyed his videos and thinks he really communicates his thoughts better than almost any other coach I have seen in videos yet.