test

test

I hope I'm not just benefitting from holiday donks and 100nl continues to be beatable for me.  I played ~900 hands today and turned -$300 at one point into +$70 in about 4 hands in the last 20 min or so.  I could guess at my total results for this week in Defiance where I've played almost all 100nl without a hud, but I'll just let myself be surprised when I import it into HEM tomorrow.  I'm also 2 days away from Ironman.  That $200 bonus is gonna be some nice extra incentive to play in January.  I have no excuse not to keep getting ironman in January and on since I'm still unemployed.

I got a digital picture frame for christmas.  I'm not sure what to do with it yet.  I'm sure there are some funny possibilities.  I'm thinking I might just round up a bunch of motivational or funny quotes and put them on a black background and put it on a slideshow next to my computer.  That could be a nice option once I have a decent sample.

I also bought myself a pair of adidas clamshells for christmas with some gift cards I got.  They're classy and I love them.

The family is good and I'm happy I got to spend some time with them, but I'm sick of them already.  I'm going back to my apartment tomorrow.  I wish my brother/sister IL/nephew could have stayed longer, but I understand their situation.  My nephew is awesome btw.  That said, I am never having kids....ever.  You know why?  Fuck that, thats why.  My nephew is 1.  my brother is 32.  He's gonna be taking care of that kid till he's 49.  Every time I think about the whole kids situation the more I think its an awful idea.  I can't imagine I'll ever want to devote 18 years of my life to taking care of somebody financially and as a guardian.  That is 18 years you never get back.  That is a LOT of money you probably never get back(unless your kid is balla).

My sister will have kids, my brother will have one more I think.  My parents should be satisfied with that.  I can get a dog or something.  I wonder how much a vasectomy is.  I wouldn't want something to happen by accident.

Poker is going well.  I don't have numbers with me, since I'm in Defiance on my laptop, but my BR is closing in on 4k.  I'm mostly taking shots and trying to move up to 100nl, and so far its going well.  Since I don't have stats on most 100nl players I don't feel like I'm missing out on much by playing on my laptop, which doesn't have HEM.  My hours have been way down this week, but I'm still putting in 1k+ hands a day.  I'm on track to hit ironman with 1 day that I can still miss.

Christmas is fun.  I saw my nephew for only the 3rd time, even though he's almost 2.  The layer of ice over NW Ohio that we've had for the last 2 weeks is annoying though, as driving is just a pain.  I kind of want to get back to Toledo, though, so I think I'll head back on the 26th.  I rented Lost Odyssey on a whim just before I left and after a few days playing it I'm completely engrossed in it.  That and I started playing starcraft again.  So I'm kind of limited in what I can do in Defiance.  Its just poker and TV to help me fill the hours.

Poker is going well.  After a 10k hand breakeven stretch(ugh) I ran hot for a bit and I'm up $750 for the month through 20k hands.  Thats a shade under 4 ptbb/100, but with rakeback its looking pretty good.  I've made a few minor changes to my game that I think is helping.  Of the 10 sessions since dropping $250 on the 1st, 9 of them have been winning sessions.  I could very easily hit 3k in the next few days since my rakeback will be coming in on Friday.  I'm not putting in the hours I originally intended, but it seems like a dumb goal to go by anyway.  Instead I'm just gonna go by hands played.  I'm gonna try to put in 60k for the month, which I'm on pace for now, but with christmas coming up its gonna be pushing it.

My sleep has been sporadic.  I'll sleep from 1-7am, put in a session, watch some tv, take a "nap" at 2pm, sleep till 7pm, play some more, go to bed at 6am, sleep till 10am, poker, sleep, etc...  I don't think I've been awake for more than about 10 hours in the last week.  I have no structure right now, which is somewhat offputting.  I need to do something about that, because this isn't good for me I'm sure, and I'm not enjoying being tired all the time.

You have to love playing 3300 hands in a session, be down multiple buyins for 99% of it, and make it all up plus some in the last ~20 hands.

I played one session early for only about 500 hands, and made $70 in the process. I felt pretty good about it but needed to get more volume in, so I started my 2nd session at about 10pm. Pretty early I had dropped a few buyins, I remember a QQ vs KK hand I probably could have gotten away from, but I'm apparently not good enough to do that yet. After that it was all downhill. Lots of losing small pots and even got 5-bet pushed by AJ into my QQ that I ended up losing. At one point I was down about over 4 BI and lost a decent sized hand to a donk when I made what I thought was a pretty decent river bluff only to be called down by 3rd pair. At this point I started to tilt, and this hand happened. Not too proud of that one, but I was running about 3 BI below EV for the session at that point and that hand evened that up pretty much.

I should have quit after that since I obviously wasn't clear headed enough to be playing. I didn't, though, still wanting to get even for the day. I probably played another 1k hands before I was around the -$130 mark. Then finally caught some luck(aside from the tilt hand.

AA vs KK semi deep
hit a flush draw
$189 side pot, lightest deep stackoff ever.

I ended up +75 for the session, and about +145 for the day. just under 4k hands for the day. ALL of my stats (w$wsf, w$sd, w$wosd) would indicate a losing day if looked at by themselves. Even my set% has been very low this week. Nothing I can do about that one, but I've been throwing a lot of money at small-mid PP with pfr and c-bets, it'd help if my hit % was a little closer to par.

Probably close to $50 in rb today and over 1k FTP I'm sure. I'm definately liking the volume I'm putting in, the first "full" rakeback payment I'll get since starting to put in a lot of volume won't come in till next friday. At this point it should be about $105 as of right now with the rest of today through Monday yet to be played. I could see myself hitting $250 in rakeback for a week! Keep the volume up for a month and thats 1k just in rakeback! Son of a bitch, this is actually starting to seem doable.

Given my play today, I'm considering taking it easy tomorrow session wise. Though I'm greedy, and if I can clear my head and convince myself to play smart I may just say fuck it and go on as normal. I don't know if I'll hit 40 hours for the week. I'm at just over 21 hours right now according to HEM. I'm not too worried about it obviously. If I put in 35 hours I'm not gonna kill myself to get another long session in, especially over the weekend.

I took like 2 weeks off from cash games for some reason and played pretty much only sngs on the laptop.  Since I'm now unemployed I figured I'd try putting in 40 hours of poker this week and see if its something doable.

My first day(monday) didn't exactly go well.  I played 8 hours, approximately 3200 hands, all 4 tabling.  I finished down ~250.  Not exactly an encouraging start.  A few things were encouraging.  I had awful luck vs shortstacks, I was probably down $200 just vs 40bb

Tuesday I ended up going to bed early without putting in a session because, well, my sleep schedule sucks lately.  I went to bed at midnight and woke up at about 6am.   I'm gonna try to stay in a similar schedule for a while, I don't really want to go back to the 2pm-7am schedule anymore.

Today I put in 2500 hands 6 tabling 50nl.  I was up over 400 when i finally put an end to the session.  Thats definately encouraging after seeing my br down under $1600 yesterday.  Now I'm back near the 2k mark.  I made about $30 in rb one top of that and close to 800 ftp.  I'll probably put in another session later tonight.  I feel pretty comfortable 6 tabling, surprisingly.  I started to get impatient playing 4 tables, and can't really 8 table without cascading.  with 6 tables I can play with some overlap but still pay attention to all the tables.  Not to mention it gets me more hands in, which is always a plus.  Only problem is now I want a bigger moniter, and I'm not sure the situation would be any different with a 24".  If I go dual moniters it would fix the overlap problem, but I'd really like to have a 30".  That's just not in the budget right now.

I'm done with tournaments for the forseeable future.  They've just been a drain on my br these last few weeks and I don't like the structure of 90% of online tournaments, so I'm gonna leave them be for a while.

My BR finally got back to 2k today.  About $72 in rakeback put me over the top.  Not bad considering the ~$300 i've blowin in MTTs recently, but oh well.  Hopefully I've gotten that out of my system.  Next week I'm really going to focus on getting some 50nl hands in, as lately my FTP have been coming half from sngs and tournies and half from cash game sessions.  I actually only have about 5k hands put in this month, and I'm up over $300 in those sessions. 

I'm gonna go ahead and set a goal for myself to get my BR up to 3k by the end of November.  I'm up over $1k in cash games, mostly 25nl actually, in the last ~3.5 weeks, so I don't see any reason why this isn't doable.  That would put me in good shape to start taking shots at 100nl in December.

oh yeah.  I'm finally up at 50nl.  In just under 60k hands I managed to be down $1,421 at one point and now I'm up $81.  I owe the comeback to variance being fucking stupid.

Fuck tournaments

Seriously, fuck them

Bowling Green > Pitt > Notre Dame imo

I started off November on a bad foot, not getting my 200 pts for ironman on the first day and owe it all to pure laziness.  I somewhat made up for it with 400 pts on the 2nd and already have my 200 pts for the 3rd.  I broke my no 25nl goal already, simply because I didn't feel like putting in a 50nl session and needed about 100 pts after some random SNGs earlier today.  Luckily I managed to be up 3+ BI in the 1k hands I put in.  That puts me at about +150 on the month, which I definately can't complain about.  Ironman is still easily reachable, but there is really no excuse for me to be missing days when I have nothing going on.  I only have 5 to spare for the month, and I know of two I'll be missing due to traveling and Thanksgiving.

October results, November Goals

The results don't look as nice  as I'd hoped, but its a start.  Thats about 2 weeks worth of play.  My last 5 or 6 sessions at 25nl have either been multiple buyin losses or small wins, which killed my winrate for the month.  50nl was going to be about breakeven until this hand gave me a nice end of the last session of the month boost.  I didn't bother to keep track of my HUsng or tournament results/buyins, so we'll call those a wash even though I'm pretty sure I came out ahead with those given a pretty sick run in HUsngs.  Earned about $250 in rakeback for the month and got Silver level ironman on FTP.  All in all not a bad start after 2 months off.

I am getting bored with 25nl.  Its just not challenging, and after long sessions if I'm not up a decent amount I tend to get impatient and much more willing to flip.  So I'm moving to 50nl.  My br is sitting just under $1,700 right now so I'm in decent shape to move up.  I'm not gonna set a hard volume goal but I do want to hit ironman for November.  I think if I really focus on moving up I can still get myself to 100nl full time by the end of the year, which is sort of a goal I had in mind before I took a break.  So for now, 50nl it is.  I think I'll keep up with HUsngs when I don't feel like playing a full session.  I'm still debating whether I want to pursue tournaments anymore right now.  They're definately not worth the time + effort at the stakes I'm willing to play right now(up to $26), but I'm still somewhat interested in them.  Maybe I'll start playing the daily double every night and cut myself off at that.  Its just frustrating to look at how much I've won at HUsngs in the last week and realize its only gone to support my nasty tourney habit.

I haven't been keeping up with my cfb picks, so I'm not gonna worry about keeping up with them anymore, at least for right now.  I made quite a few picks over the weekend on a whim just to give me a reason to watch the games.    I was 3-0-1 in coinflip games :).

Poker is wierd.  For some reason I've started to want to take shots at tournaments again.  The results have sucked...  I've probably thrown about $130 at tournament buyins in the past 3 days and I've yet to cash.  I just feel very out of place in the early stages of a tournament.  I try to stay tight, but if I don't win a hand within the first few levels then I quickly get to a point where I'm shortstacked.  One failed raise + c-bet just gets me feeling short that much quicker.  If I do happen to build an early stack,  it seems like it takes so long before the blinds get to a point where aggression really gets rewarded(early antes would help a lot imo).  I haven't played tournaments seriously for years, and after making a serious attempt at cash games this past year they just feel completely foreign to me.

Luckily for me I've also discovered HUsngs recently.  Even with the money I've thrown at tourney buyins, I'm still up over the past few days with the $11.50 turbo HUsngs I've been playing.  I've used up my sharkscope for the day so I don't have an accurate count, but I've been destroying these.  I won't claim to know heads up play that well, but even being somewhat novice I am amazed at how bad some of the people I've played have been.  I've wanted to dabble in heads up play for a while, these seem like a decent transition between 6max and HU cash.    If only I had laid off the tournies the last few days...oh well.

NBA starts tomorrow.  Portland vs LALakers will be on tv, which is the perfect way to kick off the season for me.  My lakers vs Greg Oden.

Issue 6 commercials are starting to upset me.  They've gradually gotten more definitive in their assertions in the last few months.  Anti-casino commercials have gone from hinting at loopholes that *could* allow taxes on casino revenue to drop to 0% to outright claiming the casino will pay 0% taxes, which couldn't be further from the truth.  I also like the keywords they throw in like saying the bill will give this casino a "Monopoly" in Ohio for casinos.  There are a number of things wrong with this:

1.  If anybody actually makes an effort to investigate the whole 0% tax "loophole", they'd find that among the various unlikely things that would trigger such a tax drop, among them would be a 2nd casino being authorized in the state.  So as long as this casino has a "monopoly", the whole 0% tax argument is moot.

2.  Is not wanting to let a casino operate in the state as a monopoly reason enough to forgoe the 6000+ projected jobs it would create and the millions in tax revenue for the state that is currently leaving the state for casinos in Detroit, Indiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania?

3.  Who cares about a monopoly on the casino?  Its a resort destination.  Would you not allow a golf course or an amusement partk to be built in the state if it were to be the first and only one of its kind in the state to prevent a monopoly?

The sad thing is, I know the kind of person this message is getting through to.  Its people like my parents.  They hear words like loophole and mentions of 0% tax rates and they get reminded of the whole lottery debacle in Ohio and their stance in opposition to the casino bill is set in stone.  I don't even know if I'll be in Ohio in 6 months, but I'm hoping the early projections are right and the bill gets passed.  If my other plans go to shit I'll move to Wilmington and become a dealer.

Poker, Football, and Porn stars

So much for having a reason to watch the game last night, I fell asleep early in the 1st quarter.   West Virginia came through for me, though.

Anyway, woke up around 1, put in 2k hands of 25nl and dropped 2 BI.  Then I played 5 $11.50 HUsngs and went 5-0, so I'm up like $1.50 for the night + rakeback.  Ship it!

Shortly I'll be getting on a bus to Dekalb, Illinois for the BG/NIU game tomorrow.  I know nothing about Dekalb, but thats what wikipedia is for!

"DeKalb is a city in DeKalb County, Illinois, United States. The population was 39,018 at the 2000 census. The city's name (as well as the name of DeKalb County, where it is located) is IPA: /dɨˈkælb/ "di-KALB" with the L sound, unlike similarly spelled locations where the L is silent, such as DeKalb County, Georgia. The city is named after decorated German war hero Johann De Kalb who gave his life for American Independence during the American Revolutionary War."

boring...

other fun facts from wikipedia:

birthplace of barbed wire

birthplace of cindy crawford

"Porn Star T.J. Hart (real name Amy Damkroger) was born and raised in Dekalb and graduated from Dekalb High School."

porn star you say?

"She graduated from the Northern Illinois University with a degree in General Studies. She enjoys riding horses and is a former ballerina. She is a member of Kishwaukee Country Club"

She sounds like a classy lady.  See you all in Dekalb.  Over/Under on # of Michael "Burner" Turner jersies I see is 12.5

You know you're a degen when....

...you flip a coin to see which team to bet on just so you have a reason to watch some Thursday night football.

Auburn @ West Virginia -3.5  bet 1.1u to win 1u.

My last 3 sessions have taken a 180 at around the 1000 hand mark, so I took my 4 BI and shut it down early.  I'll have to get another session in sometime today to get my 200 pts for ironman.  I can pretty safely move back up to 50nl, but I'll probably just keep being a br nit and play 25nl till my br is back up to 2k.  At the rate i'm going now I'll be there before the month is over.

One bet so far this week, probably more to come.

Purdue/Minnesota o51  bet 3.3u to win 3u

I've barely looked at the lines this week, and I'm basically trailing mt2r with this pick.  I liked his analysis, though.  Minnesota has impressed me this year and Purdue's offense is good enough to put up their share of the points, while neither defense has impressed me.

Last 2 days of poker

This is the graph of the latest session, nice recovery to break even imo.

Frustrating few days to say the least.  I play a pretty swingy style at 25nl as it is, but that -7BI session was trying my patience.  That along with the first half of this latest session and things were looking pretty bleak.  I'm on track to hit silver ironman pretty easy, so I may take a day off sometime this week.  I put in almost 14k hands this week, which looking back doesn't seem like all that many anymore.  I definately could play more.  I could probably push for 20k in a week.  Not this week, though.  BG has an away game, so I'll be gone thursday, friday, and saturday.  

CFB Pick results

Georgia Tech -2.5 v. Clemson -- 2.2u to win 2u -- W

Miami, FL -3 v. Duke -2.2u to win 2u -- W

Ohio State/Michigan State u42 -- 1.1u to win 1u -- L

Michigan/Penn State o46.5 -- 1.1u to win 1u -- W

Kansas St/Colorado u59 -- 1.1u to win 1u -- W

Baylor +17 v. Oklahoma St. -- 2.2u to win 2u -- L

South Carolina ML v. LSU -- .909u to win 1u -- L

went 4-3 for +1.791u

for the record i'm 13-15 for +0.649u. I'm betting very casually obviously, and don't have much of a system beyond doing some basic research. I'm considering starting up a power ranking but it'd be a considerable amount of time before I had enough data for one to be useful. It'd be fun as something to play with next year though if i get around to gathering data for this year.

disregard the x on the previous post, formatting let me down.  for shame blogspot, for shame.

Frustrating Poker Today

       x

2 sessions, the x marks the end of the first session. As you can see I was up a significant amount, 3 BI in each session, and came back to earth. The first session was a result of suckouts, The biggest of which was an AK vs J9s hand where I flopped top 2 and the villian waited until he blanked on the turn to push/semi-bluff his near 200bb stack, then hit the flush on the river. In the second session I just got a few coolers. I felt like playing more but started to get frustrated after seeing the same story twice in one day so I'm done for now. Add in the fact that I'm down probably ~$75 in tourney/sngs today and I'd chalk this up as one of them bad days.

I haven't made the greatest effort in football picks this week, but I've made a few bets.

Georgia Tech -2.5 v. Clemson -- 2.2u to win 2u

Miami, FL -3 v. Duke -2.2u to win 2u

Ohio State/Michigan State u42 -- 1.1u to win 1u

Michigan/Penn State o46.5 -- 1.1u to win 1u

Kansas St/Colorado u59 -- 1.1u to win 1u

Baylor +17 v. Oklahoma St. -- 2.2u to win 2u

South Carolina ML v. LSU -- .909u to win 1u

I woke up at 6pm yesterday, which means i'm not sleeping before i have to be at the game in BG at 10am which means I'm not sleeping tomorrow because I'll be watching football. so here's to at least 30 hours being awake.cheers

More poker!

Triple FPP happy hour was enough incentive for me to put in a session at 50nl today, ended up a couple buyins on the good side and made out with a little under 1k FPP in the process.  Added in a 1700 hand session at 25nl during insomniac hours and frustratingly only netted 1 BI.   I think I'll keep jumping between 25nl and 50nl until I get my BR back up to about 40 BI since, well, I'm a nit.  I can't bring myself to play 50nl full time with 20-25 BI, not after what I went through in July anyway.

I should hit Silver level of Ironman this month, which isn't bad considering I didn't put in a real session until the 13th.  At the rate I'm playing I should start netting $100+ a week in rb again, which is nice since its free money I've neglected to put the necessary work into for the last 2 months.

I find it odd the role poker plays in my life.  I'm either completely engulfed in it or I completely stay away from it.  Since August I hadn't played poker aside from the random super turbo sng, watched a video, or so much as ventured into any of the actual poker related forums on 2p2.  All of the sudden I get that itch to play and before I know it, I put in 2,500 hands today, read nvg, bbv, televised poker, and even some of the uNL forum(crazy, I know).  That and I'm currently downloading episodes of WSOP and PAD.  I even watched a deucescracked video.  Maybe tomorrow I'll give SP a holler and cash in those coaching lessons I ordered back in July.

Few observations from my weekend in columbus.  I need to either branch out and make some new friends or catch up with some of my old friends from high school and college that I've sort of drifted from.  I have a very small circle of friends at the moment, which, while not necessarily bad, is kind of discouraging.  There needs to be a rule against getting married before you're 25.  It completely fucks with your social situation.  I also found out that this diet I'm on has me reacting very strangely to a full day's worth of solid food.  Eating at Mcdonalds and then at Hoggy's in columbus had me feeling like complete shit and kept me in for the night, which caused me to miss out on some bachelor party shenanigans that randomly happened.  I'm gonna have to make some adjustments, and also maybe buy a scale, since its odd to be on a diet and not have access to one.

Also, Terrell Pryor is frustratingly talented, Penn State is real good, and lol at Michigan.  TOLEDOOOOOOOO!

poker is EZ

Got that itch, and I'm scratchin it.

I cashed out a good bit of my br for a laptop, payin some bills, and put some in a sportsbook.  Left myself with a little over 1k.  After knocking that down to about 900 in some PLO adventures, I decided it was back to holdem.  Since I'm a br nit, that means off to 25nl.

I forgot how fun 25nl is sometimes.  8 tables, no thinking, easy money.  I'm gonna try to put in 10k hands this week.  so far my I've got 3259 hands and I'm +$178.35.  Sustainable imo.  Its been enough to bump me back over the $1100 mark.  I remember how long it took me to go from 1k-2k the first time around,  I honestly think I can get my br back to where it was fairly quickly.  We'll see.

I'm gonna start posting my sports bets here, just to keep the blog going.  Hopefully it won't stay dry for a month+ anymore.