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Well I’m just hours away from my Senior Year of High School starting. I have every emotion running through me right now: anxious, nervous, excited, scared. You name it, I have it. I did get a bunch of the stuff I needed to get done before school started done but the last couple things I’ll get done this weekend. As for my sleeping schedule which at times during the summer I was going to bed in the middle of the day, last night I fell asleep at 9pm and woke up at 3am. Then I proceeded to fall back asleep at 10am till noon. Not the worst thing but certainly not the best. The most important thing is that I can get a good like 6 hours of sleep tonight because the past two years I went to school with zero sleep and that was bad. Its just hard to fall asleep the night before the first day of school. As for how my poker schedule is going to change during the school year, I’ll have to save it for another time because I may have to take this game more seriously than I ever have.

So summer ended today and overall I’m happy with how it went. It was much more about poker than previous years and that paid off financially as I really made a ton of money “working” this summer. Probably the best memory of the summer was the SSOP and that whole week. It included the weirdest night of my life along with Matt and myself getting a glimpse of the pro poker player lifestyle. I also had the $3 rebuy win on Stars this summer for over 5 grand. That was definitely exciting. Overall, I’m happy about my summer and as usual I’m not too sad about going back to school to see some people I didnt see this summer. Of course this excited feeling about going back won’t last much longer than the first time I have to do homework instead of play a tournament ; )

Later Guys

Double

So the biggest sports story right now is obviously the Michael Vick dog fighting case. I’m completely disgusted by him. I think what he did is almost at child molestor status. How can one human being be so sick? For six years he did anything he could to this innocent dogs to make them angry enough to eventually one day go and fight to the death. Oh and if they weren’t good enough, he’d drown them, electricute them, or strangle them. It makes me sick.

Another thing that makes me sick is all of his supporters. Not that I want to make this a racial issue but it has already become that. Most black people support Michael Vick. They, along with any of his white supporters are either ignorant, stupid, or both. I saw an interview with a black woman who when asked what she thinks he should receive as punishment for his crime, she said he should get a slap on the wrist. There are even some people who say even after he himself has confessed to his crimes and apologized that hes innocent! Are you fucking stupid? It reminds me of a Dave Chappelle sketch where he was a black citizen being questioned to be part of a jury in court and when they asked him what he thought they needed to convict R. Kelly of peeing on an underage girl he started sayin, well the police need to be watching him do it, she needs to be holding her I.D. up, and his grandma needs to be there photographing it. lol

Theres also people like Stephan Marbury who say dog fighting is a sport. Really? To quote my dad, “do they play the national anthem before a dog fight?” I can’t blame the black community who supports Vick though, I mean even their own association, the NAACP, said after Vick agreed to a plea deal that they still support him. The people who say “they’re just dogs” or “this goes on everywhere” go fuck yourselves. First off, they’re not just dogs. All dog owners know what I’m talking about. Your dog becomes your best friend. As for saying it goes on everywhere, so do murders, rapes, and children being molested. Does that make it right? Seriously shut the fuck up you ignorant people. I know some fans still support Vick because they might have become Falcons fans because of him and they’re upset that hes leaving but come on, the guy is a sick human being who deserved to be tortured just like these dogs were.

Anyways, I hope this man gets as much jail time as possible (up to 5 years), I hope he never returns to the NFL and I hope one day hes walking down the street and someone lets their German Sheppard loose on him.

On a different note, the Red Sox are playing the Yankees tonight and I’m pumped. The sox have finally got the lead back up to 8 games and I’m hoping they can make it 11 after the series is over. I’ve been one the whole season when it was 14.5 games and ppl were saying its over, to never count the Yankees out and I still dont. I won’t count the Yankees out till the season is over but I’m really happy with the team we have right now and hopefully they do well gainst the yanks tonight.

Thats all for tonight guys, I’ll have a poker blog up in a day or so.

Peace

Double

Well two of my friends were in a $8.80 180 man on FT so I decided to surprise them and enter it to go along with the slew of mtts I was already in. I had a huge stack right from the start and just cruised. With 30 left, a friend of mine who never ever plays on FT (only plays/pwns 180 mans on Stars) said in the chatbox that he was in so I check the lobby and hes 3rd in chips. lolol We make a last longer bet and I really felt we were gonna go 1-2. Sure enough we headed to the FT 1-2 in chips. I was able to get away with so much like opening for 2.2x and steal without resistance. So yeah we got to HU with me having a 2:1 cl and he asked to chop. As many of you know, I never ever chop but since the money was so small (like $380 to first, $240ish to second) and hes a friend I considered it. I offered to take $350 and we’d end it. He declined so we played on. The very next hand I raise AK he ships K3s, gg him. Weeeeeeeeee

Very very small win but kinda a confidence booster that I’m still doing things right. Then last night I was getting pretty deep in Daily Double A and the rail is buggin the shit outta me. All my friends are beggin for money and I said lemme think about it. That wasn’t good enough. So I said, no I need the cash before I ship you money online but that wasn’t good enough so they kept being fuckin annoyin so I had to turn off observer chat for the rest of the tournament. (something I never do) I ended up taking 15th. I think my bustout hand was a mistake. Blinds 5/10k button with 150k opens for 30k (saw him open K8s in EP so I know his button range is huge), I reship 130k total with 86s, he calls with A8o, gg. I shoulda had at least 150k if I wanted to resteal but w/e.

Tonight I planned on goin to bed really early to start getting my sleep schedule back on track and because I’m goin out tomorrow but just as I shut my eyes my friend calls me and asks if I wanna play poker. I’m like wtf no I wanna go to bed. Well obv I got convinced to go and finished 2nd but now its almost 3am and I’m gonna be up for a while. Sigh

Sunday if I have most of the stuff I need to get done tomorrow done then I’ll probably put in a full day of play but if I dont then I’ll probably still find a way to play. lol

GL

Double

With 9 days left until school starts I’ve been busy. Unfortunately I’ve fallen into a schedule that usually goes something like go to bed at 4-9am, wake up 12-8pm, do whatever till 4-9am and doing it all over again. Its reeeeeeeeally bad and today I have so much stuff to do but as I look over at the clock its almost 7am and I havn’t gone to bed yet.

Last night after I had woken up at 6pm I decided I was gonna play a couple tournies. I was in the mood so I fired up the 20k grtd, $11 1r/1a, $3r, $28 FO, $26 FO, Fifty Fifty (friend begged me to play stt sat with him and i won it), and both Daily Doubles. I kept getting brutalized with cooler after cooler and bad beat after bad beat but I actually didn’t tilt at all which was good. I think what tilted me was my connection lol. I kept getting disconnected and at one point I couldn’t log in for 20 minutes.

I will say though that I played a couple hands very poorly and they cost me. BB with AA 60/120 button opens for 360, sb flats, now normally this would be a spot with my stack at 3500 I wouldn’t mine squeezing light but with my AA I overcalled which was bad but flop came AQx rainbow. chk/chk/bet and I just call which I dont think is that bad, Turn: J This is where I have to bet. If he doesn’t have an ace or two pair hes folding anyway and hes not gonna bluff at it but instead I checked and the river came the dreadful K. I just really wanted to see anything but that so I chked and he bet and I just can’t fold so I called with my AA and he showed AT : ( My fault for losing the pot though as I butchered it pretty badly.

Anyways so I made a couple bad plays but overall I thought I played pretty well. Results: Bricked 20k, Bricked 1r/1a, 68/4000 in $3r, bricked $28 and $26 FO, bubbled DD A, cashed in DD B. Oh well

Couple sidenotes: iPod battery died on me at like 6pm and had to figure out how to charge it which I’m doing right now. Also, I’ve been watching a ton of CR vids, mostly mtts and the thing you learn when you watch so many different videos from different ppl on pxf and cr is that theres all kinds of styles so what one great tournament player thinks is a bad play, another thinks is standard. Kinda makes it interesting when you try and come up with your own different ways of playing hands. Enough babbling

Peace

Double

Yeah thats what today was. I had planned on getting some of the stuff I needed to get done today so I headed over to Circuit City and got an 80GB Video iPod which I’m listening to at the moment. I had thoughts about getting an iPod for prob 4 years now so you could say I’m overdue lol. Next I headed over to Verizon Wirelss to upgrade my phone but they weren’t open so I’ll probably go back on Tuesday or Wednesday. Then I went to like 10 places to get a new pair of sneakers but none of them had what I was looking for so I might go to the mall on Tuesday or Wednesday and see if I can find something there. I also have to get clothes before school starts but I’m not sure when I’m gonna get to that though. Before I came home I stopped by to see Ginger and that was nice. She looked like she had adjusted pretty well so thats good.

So I came home around 5ish and headed on AIM. I got into a convo with two friends of mine who owe me money. Basically both of them are 2 weeks late in paying me and they lied to me repeatedly about where they were the night of the last tournament where they both didn’t show up. Its kinda sad really, kinda hurts that they wont just tell me the truth. I really would be so much happier if they said “sorry don, we didnt mean to be so late in paying you and we’ve been avoiding you” but nope they gotta insist on lieing me to me even after I caught them time and time again in lies. Whatever, I’m getting the money they owe me paid tomorrow but I’m gonna now have to put serious consideration into either not letting them borrow or charging interest.

There was some more drama with some other people mad at me for stupid reasons but I decided to put it behind me and play some tournaments. I played 11pm $30 on stars, 11pm $14k grtd on FT, MM, and $20 at midnight on stars. The $30 i think I finished 10 away from the money after getting brutally unlucky. The $14k I had 10k in chips by the end of the first level. I took some reeeeeeeeally gross beats for huge pots but I had maintained my stack while busting in the MM and $20 to coinflips. So like 30 ppl left blinds 8/1600 (this is 6 handed tourney) cl button opens for 6400, i reshove for 32k with 77 and he beats me in the pot with A2ss. Aaaaaaaaaand he turns the flush. Then my friend whos in the Midnight Madness who had swapped 10% with me, finishes 20 away from the money. Then I start betting $5 a flop in the FTOPS ME with Gib till no not baxter wins or busts and I had black, he had red. As of right now, I’m down $50. lol

I dunno, it probably doesn’t sound that bad but idk everything combined plus other stress just made today seem so shitty. Whatever, tomorrows a new day and its gotta be better than today. To conclude……….

FUCK SUNDAYS

Double

Well, at least online poker. I cannot for the life of me do anything in an online poker tournament. I’ve bubbled like 30% of my last 30 tournies and I’m down a lot since my win. I still have more than the proper roll to play the $3r, and freezeouts $5-35 but I wish I had the br to play $50s comfortably. I’m also tilting rediculously after only like 1 or 2 bust outs. Last night I was so mad that I bubbled the $24k on FT that I open shoved 3 times in a row like 2 1/2 hours deep in the $3r and then I sat out to cash. I mean I’m sure it was the best thing b/c I would’ve just tilted off the rest of my chips if I didn’t sit out but its like I’m doing so bad in tournaments since that win, that I almost play to cash now which is really bad. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Take a break? Theres like 2 weeks of summer left and what am I gonna do, just take a break from poker everytime I go on a downswing? Ughhhh

As for live poker, I played tonight and finished 5th which seems to be a bad trend of late. I played alright but I was reading really well which makes me feel good. Its an easy game when you know your opponents exact two hole cards every hand. Although I do think I made a bad call that probably cost me the tournament. Blinds 50/100 I raise KQ, bb flats. Flop: Q98 two clubs. He checks I bet 350 and he shoves for 1050 more. I just knew it wasn’t a draw. I knew he had a made hand but I know he repops me with AQ, QQ, and prob 99. I had a weird feeling it was JT but I called in the slight hopes it was QJ or QT and because there was a lot in the pot but he flipped up JT, I play bad. Its ok though, I almost feel better reading as well as I did tonight than to win.

A disturbing trend has been occuring lately in the home game lately. Theres been horrible ediquette (sp?) and it pisses me off. For example, when I was thinking about calling the all in with KQ, everyone is like talking and yelling. I couldn’t think and that sucks. I’m not saying that I fold if I have a minute of silence but I’ll never know. Also like I’m in the middle of a hand with aces and the kid next to me pulls my cards towards him and looks at them. WTF, like do you have any ediquette at all? It forces me to look like an asshole because I have to angrily say “what the fuck dude, don’t look at my hand.” The one that takes the cake though was when I shoved all in 3 times in a row and this kid kept saying “don has nothing call him” and “he hasn’t looked” (I actually did look) and then he went over to people who were thinking of calling and said “oh you definitely have to call”. Like shut the fuck up, I dont care if I have AA or 72o, dont give your opinion of what I have when people are still in the pot and just shut your mouth. The overall play, actions when people take a bad beat or bust, and ediquette of the home game have changed drastically which is really unfortunate.

As for my dog Ginger, I havn’t gone to see her at my mom’s yet mostly because I’m waking up at 1-4pm which is the time period where I could go over. My mom said shes doing well there and adjusting nicely which is good to hear. I’ve been doing my best not to think of her and for the most part I’ve kept myself busy enough that I havn’t.

With 2 weeks left in summer I have so much shit to do its not even funny. I need to stop being so damn lazy and get ready for the start of school. If history repeats itself though, nothing is going to get done.

Peace

Double

This past weekend I got bit by the bug. I had a sudden craving to play mtts and lots of them. So thats just what I did. Did it go well? Obv not. I had like 2 cashes for a combined 81 cents. Who knows how many I played and how much I lost but it was not good. It all culminated tonight when I just rediculously monkey tilted off two tournaments shoving aipf till I busted. Although, I’m not sure it was all due to frustration from bad beats in prior tournaments. See we gave one of our dogs away today. I have two dogs, Lovely and Ginger. Lovely has been with me since I was 5 and hes the calm, well mannered, old dog. Then theres Ginger, the active, young, misbehaving dog. Shes been with me for 5 years. When my parents got divorced, my dad and I took both dogs and they’ve been living with us ever since. Lovely was always my dog and Ginger had been my sister’s dog until she moved in with us. She became my dog and I cannot put into words how upsetting it is thats shes gone. She went to go live with my mom who lives 5 minutes away but its like she died. Its not going to be the same to have to go see her as it would be to have her smiling face greet you everyday you got home from school. If I had a bad day she would always cheer my up. People who aren’t dog owners probably think I’m crazy but dog owners know what I’m talking about. Just to have someone love you unconditionally no matter how you’re feeling is incredible. Its like losing a family member. I’m getting choked up just typing this. Ginger literally followed me wherever I went. If I went up to my room, she followed me. If I went outside, she’d be right behind me. I’ve probably spent more time with her than I have with anyone else in the last 5 years. Thats why its so sad that she had to leave. I mean its probably for the best because the past month or so she had just been misbehaving out of control and it was even getting hard for me to deal with but I just miss her so much already and shes only been gone for a couple hours. Granted I’ll still be left with my other dog Lovely and I love him to death but hes so old that he physically just can’t follow me around everywhere and play games with me like Ginger could. And I’m lucky that my mom would take Ginger for me and I’ll still be able to see her anytime but its just not gonna be the same. I also feel so bad because I’m sure shes over there wondering where I am and thinking I abandoned her. Its just so tough ya know. I’m sure it’ll get better with time but as for right now, I get choked up thinking about her. I have no clue what my plans for poker will be in the near future. It seems so insignificant right now. I only played tonight to get my mind off her leaving. I dunno man, we’ll see how I feel the next couple days and go from there.

I Miss You Ginge

Double

I’ve been on a “vacation” of sorts from my “job” the past week. (notice how I put those two words in quotes) The last week or so I havn’t played any online tournaments and I’ve really been enjoying it. Sometimes I think I enjoy railing people and watching CR/PXF vids more than I do actually playing. Thats basically what I’ve been doing this past week. I’ve been watching a ton of Cardrunners vids mostly cash games and I think I’ve learned a lot. I attempted today to put what I’ve learned to the test 2 tabling .50/1 6 max and profited half a buy in after half hour or so. I have the bankroll to comfortably play 2/4 nl 6 max but I choose not to. I’m just starting out playing cash games so I wanna see how I do in the smaller games and then hopefully move up.

As for tournaments, I’m not sure when I’m going to start playing them again. I might start up today seeing its the weekend but I truely dont have much drive to. I know when school starts I’ll be dieing for times like this where I can wake up at noon and play tournaments all day and night but I’ve made my money for the summer so I dont see much point to put myself through the tournament grind day in and day out.

Speaking of school, I have a lot of work to do in order to get ready for it. I start August 30th and I have sooooo much stuff to do in 19 days. Combined by the fact I’m unbelievably lazy, I doubt all the things I need to get done will in time.

Peace

Double

Ok so I already wrote a blog up for this and I dont feel like doing it again. Basically yesterday morning I was bored so I bought Cardrunners through Pokerstars. Already watched 6 vids, and they were good.

I bubbled the $50 Fifty Grand Grtd tourney back to back and $8r cash has been the only one since the win. I havn’t been tilting and I’ve been playing well so thats good.

We had a home game tourney last night and I took it down. It was a cakewalk which is always nice.

Later Kiddies

Double

Note to self: Dont blog while tilting.

Alright so now I’ve cooled down and can actually make a decent entry. The last two days I played a bunch of tournaments. I played the $8r with Zang for the first time which was fun and eventually cashed but didn’t do much else. I played the Daily Fifty Grand and bubbled it. I played couple other $55s, couple $3 rebuys, and some $20-30s. Out of all of them I only cashed in the $8r.

I feel like I’ve wasted my luck. Thats not something that many people recognize and I was one of them till recently. I’ve noticed that I’ve been running well but my results have been aweful and this goes back to before my win. Yes, I won 5 grand and that could easily blind me from the fact I should have won more if I just played well when running well. Its easy to say that I’m losing so I must be running bad but thats definitely not the case. I dont know what the exact numbers are because I stopped keeping records of all my tournaments back in July which I’m not sure if I mentioned. If I didn’t, I stopped keeping track because I felt like I wasn’t getting any use out of them. Sure I could go back and tell you what tournaments I played on which days and how I did but I wasn’t learning anything from them and I felt like it was a waste of time.

Ok so I feel like I havn’t played my best in every tournament but I’ve been running well. What does this all mean? Well I think it was Bkice who had posted about how if you dont play your best or close to it in every tournament you play then the tournaments that you dont, you dont know what could have been (or something to that effect). I started thinking about it and it makes so much sense. Whos to say that in even just one of these tournaments had I played my best that I wouldn’t have gone on to win it?  

Another thing thats really holding me back and right now is the reason I could never do this as a job is tilt. Whether its tilting while playing or tilting after a bust, I tilt way too much. A couple weeks ago I had it well under control. I could bust from 5 tournaments at once to bad beats and wouldn’t look the other way but now its like if I get repopped I start tilting. I have no idea why. I relate tilting to smoking. I think people who refuse to try to and control their actions smoke and the same goes with tilting. I’m not sure what I can do other than try harder to not tilt but I will try.

Speaking of “doing this as a job” some would say that I already do but I dont see it as a job. I play when I want, I dont have rent to pay, I dont have major bills to pay, and if I dont play for 3 weeks, its not gonna kill me. I guess with the time I put in and the money I make it could be considered a job but I dont see it that way and I’m not sure if I ever will.

One last thing I wanted to talk about was math in poker. I read an article on p5s basically saying Dutch Boyd was right in getting his money in bad 3 times against Hachem in that heads up match at the series because of the probability that he’d win 1 of them. While I understand that the math works, I dont agree with the concept. First off, Dutch doesn’t know what position hes in when hes sticking his money in. As far as he knows Hachem could have AA all three times and then the math doesn’t work. But thats beside the point, the point is that I can’t wrap my mind around purposely sticking your money in bad because “you’ll win one of them”. With all the top players going into great detail about math in certain shove/push situations or whatever I began to wonder if thats all online poker is……math. And it may be that but thats why its not real poker. Real poker is live poker. I saw the movie “Rounders” on Wednesday for the first time and watched it another 5 times as I type this on Friday morning. The movie really drove that point home. It reminds me how in real poker all these math wizards dont do nearly as well as the natural born poker players. Let me ask you this, would you rather be able to read people and know what they have or be able to figure out what the probabilty of their range is? I love the part where Mike is talking to the Dean about how his cards wouldn’t even matter in the lawyer/judges game. How he could play it blind and cut it up. It just reminds me of my own home game and my thoughts on playing the person and not the cards. Great movie.

Dont get me wrong I know theres the optimal game theory for poker tournaments and -EV plays in the long run and I know some people go by that and its great for them but it’ll never be me. Will I eventually secum to that and play online poker based on all that math, maybe but thats why live will always be real poker. People who have a deep understanding for the math in poker are usually pretty successful and someone like David Skalanksy has been making the majority of his living off gambling some being poker for years now. But I’ll take Daniel Negreanu over David Skalanksy in any game anyday. Skalansky will put Negreanu on a type of range of hands he has and knows the optimal play according to math while Negreanu knows what David is holding and can exploit it to the maximum.

My plans for the next couple days are up in the air. I wanna review some more hhs and make sure when I set out to put in a full day of playing, I dont play bad and tilt because I’m realizing that I’ll never achieve success at these limits if I continue doing those things.

Peace

Double