New Blog

After becoming interested in reading some blogs and hearing some clamoring for me to start one of my own, I have decided to start this blog. It will mainly detail my poker life, but may have some other topics mixed in. Some of the other poker blogs that I have read tell the exact dollar gain or loss that that player has taken every day. I have always been a bit more reclusive about my finances, so I will do this some days, but not everyday. I think it will give some people a better feel for a common day if I do give details on some days, but it won't disclose more information than I want to give. I have also become more open to sharing since there are websites that tell a large amount of win/loss for every online player.

11/8/07
I am just getting back into playing poker after not doing hardly any in the past couple months. I had an unbelievable trip to Europe with Matt Ricatto, then I was in Denver going to Colorado Rockies (NL Champs) World Series games, golfing, and hanging with the family. I never thought I would be, but I really was a bit rusty after the hiatus. After kinda running in place for a few days and getting significantly more frustrated than usual, yesterday was a very fun day of poker. (Side note: I handle losing days very easily after several winning days, but after a long layoff I guess I subconsciously wanted to get started going forward instead of backward.) So yesterday I got a new computer in the morning which i love so far. It's an HP, which I didn't know much about until recently with a very large screen. Once it was up and running, I played some heads-up (one on one) no-limit hold 'em (NLHE). I don't really remember much specifically, but I know I did well. I have had success in the past in all levels up to 5/10 blinds, but I decided that I would not play 5/10 blinds ($1000) buy-in for a while until I dominate the lower levels for a while. I have recently decided to step up my aggression even though i would say that I was easily in the top 1% of most aggressive poker players even before this new declaration. I still change gears a bit depending on the opponent, but I guess my default aggression level has recently been turned up a notch.

I worked out in the late afternoon, then ate some Thai food and then came back to play some tournaments online. Recently I've been trying to win a trip to the Bahamas which includes a $8000 buy in to a tournament and $4000 worth of accommodations at the Atlantis resort. I have gotten a 7th, 6th, and 4th in the past week when first place gets the package. Last night I got down to the final two of 160 entrants and lost. That was a bit disappointing because I had a nice stack and most of the final table was comprised of average players. The other very good player was the guy who won. It ended up in a coin flip when he had about 60% of the chips when we were all in pre-flop with A9 vs. 88. Obviously he won, and I won the massive second prize of $0.00. Almost all tournaments pay the top 10%, but this was a winner take all. This was easier to swallow because I could not point to one bad play or missed opportunity that could have changes the outcome. About an hour before the final table of this tournament, I won a 6-handed (6 players per table, instead of the standard 9) on Full Tilt for $2355. All in all, good day and good job by new computer who paid for himself in his first day.

11/9/07
I had been on a good sleep schedule until I was kept up by the tournaments last night, so I didn't wake up until 11:30 today. I hopelessly watched the stock market tumble before firing up some poker games. my friend Mooney wanted me to watch him and go through some thinking with him before he made his decisions, so I happily did this while I was playing. I played some 3/6 heads up and was dominating a couple guys and then got really lucky in a $1400 pot when I got it all in as a 90% dog. Oops. I probably won about $1500 in those heads-up matches before I went to work out, eat, and went to best buy to pick up my Sony Vaio that's on the disabled list with a broken hard drive. When I got home I fired up about 6 tournaments and cashed in 2. One was barely for my money back, and the other one was for $380. I took 18th in the poker stars $109 nightly tounament when my pocket tens couldn't hold up to AJ when we were all in preflop. I would have had a top 2 stack with 18 left and aiming for $8000 for first had I won that "coinflip," but it wasn't meant to be. While these tournaments were finishing, I played some heads up and made about $500. I played one hyper-aggresive player so we butted heads for a while at 3/6 blinds, and after being down 800, to up 200 and back to down 400 then even, I decided that I was going to find an easier opponent. While that bloodbath was going on, I picked off about $400 from one guy and a couple hundred from another at 2/4.

It was a good day alltogether, and It's nice to be working out regularly again after a couple months of not being able to. I think it gives me more energy, and makes me feel better altogether. This weekend I plan on playing poker a lot and watching football at the same time. I have been going out a lot over the past couple months and drinking more than usual, so after last weekend I've gone into health mode for a little bit while I'm not traveling (only 3 days until I leave again, but I'll go over that tomorrow)