CardRunners

I see Ezra or someone changed all of the names of the Team CR blogs. It went from Andrew to Andrew Wiggins: Poker Blog or something silly like that. I know they did it for SEO reasons, but is anyone really searching for my blog or even my name on google anyway? I don't think so. I'm gonna see if I can't change it back. Frankly, I'd prefer someone who searched my name on google didn't find my blog. Who knows, it might be my girlfiend's parents or someone like that.

Lil Wayne was an analyst on ESPN's First Take today. I usually watch that show for 15-20 minutes every morning so I was excited to see how Lil Wayne fit it. The answer was not well. He talked like he knew what he was talking about but it was clear he didn't. He kept using the phrase "they gonna rip they heads off" or something to that effect. Like they would ask him if he thought the Titans or the Ravens were gonna win and he would say "I like the Titans, but the Ravens gonna rip they head off."  He was also saying that he thinks Lendale White is horrible. "That guy just run like three or fo yards. That's it. He ain't no good. Chris Johnson doesn't help him be a better running back." Dana responded with the fact that the balance of power and speed with Chris and Lendale was great. Lil Wayne said, "I don't care, that don't make Lendale any good. He too slow." I guess it was somewhat entertaining now that I'm thinking back on it. I wonder if they will ever have him on again.

While I'm on the topic of ESPN I'd like to note that I don't like their new site at all. They completely redid the site and launched it yesterday. I really liked their old format, but I guess they decided that they needed to go to a more video intensive layout. Hopefully I'll get used to it, because I spend a lot of time on that site.

I caught an old SNL on E over the weekend. Britney Spears was the host and it was from 2002. Damn was that girl fine back then. I really didn't remember how hot she was. Even though "she's back" now, she doesn't do any justice to her former self. I guess part of it is getting older and part is being a crazy bitch that doesn't take care of herself at all. I guess you have to blame the 2 babies too. Still a shame.



I've decided that I'm going to start to learn to cook some. This thought process basically started when I got my venison from my deer. I knew I was going to need some way to eat it. I made my first meal over the weekend and it was a great chili dish. I got it off the Food Network website. They have a pretty cool website by the way. There are tons of recipes on there. Anyway, it was an Emeril recipe with a good blend of taste and spiciness.  When I started to make it I was a bit discouraged by the lack of beans (there weren't any). I almost even aborted the process to go look for a new recipe. I'm glad I went through with it though. I'm basically a terrible cook. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I even managed to cut my finger twice while cutting stuff up. I need to work on my cutting form. I also started watching the Food Network. I've watched it a few times over the last week and I think it's pretty interesting. I saw some guy make an awesome looking 5 cheese Macaroni and Cheese. It seems a bit out of my skill level, but I might try to tackle it anyway. It just looked so damn good.

So I noted that this spell check doesn't recognize the word blog. I just learned it doesn't recognize google either. Great blog spell checker.

So I think the title of my last post encouraged people to click on CTS's blog even though he hasn't updated it in a few weeks, because he is ahead of me now. I'll try to avoid doing that in the future. Sorry I haven't blogged lately. I had a big blog planned out that I was gonna write on Dec 31, but I ended up getting invited to the Bulls game that day and then I basically shut it down through the weekend. Now I'm back in the swing of things and I want to blog.

So as I mentioned, I got to go to the Bulls game on New Years eve. I somehow hadn't been to a Bulls game yet this year so I was pretty pumped to finally get out to one. I also love Dwight Howard. I knew he would destroy the Bulls, but I figured it would be fun to watch. Unfortunately, they destroyed the Bulls much worse than I ever imagined. The Bulls were down 15 by the end of the first quarter and 30 by half. They suck. They absolutely suck. They have no big men and can't even dream of stopping or outrebounding a team with a big man like Dhoward. At least I got a reason to wear my new Derrick Rose jersey. I got my brother tickets for Cavs - Bulls next week. I got us really good seats. We are 2nd row off the court. I've been wanting to see Lebron up close for awhile. This is my chance. I just worry that it will also be a terrible game. I guess that's the price you have to pay to see Lebron these days.

Not much to note about New Years Eve. We went to a local bar where we got a $80 all you can drink from 9-2am deal. A bunch of my friends were there and it was a good time. Here are a few pics.







This is one of the few pics I have from our Christmas party. Since it's got 3 poker players in it, I figured I'd post it.



The rest of the weekend, I took it pretty easy. I played a decent amount of poker and just hung out and watched TV. I did see a few movies that I liked a lot. I rented The Kindgom (Jamie Foxx and Jen Garner) and I thought it was really good. The action was great. It's definitely worth watching. I also saw Gran Torino in the theater. Clint Eastwood is obviously a badass and this movie is no exception. Go see it. It's good.

End of 2008 Thoughts:
Every year since I started this blog (mid 2006), I have written up a brief summary of the year and talked about my goals going into 2009. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it this year because I've found I don't stick to my "resolutions." To be frank, I've had some dumb resolutins. For instance, I had "learn spanish" as one. I'm never going to sit down and relearn Spanish with the life I currently live. Maybe this is something I can do in the future, but I just won't do it now. That was a stupid resolution.

Anyway, I had a really good year in 2008. I think we made some great strides with Cardrunners. CR didn't grow as much as I had hoped it would, but I feel our product improved a lot. We've also brought in some great new pros. You guys are all pretty familar with this, so I won't go too much into detail.

In my personal life, things were really good.  I met Julia. I guess I technically met her in 2007, but we started dating in 2008. We just had our 1 year anniversery the other day. I can't believe we have been dating for a year. It's been a great year though. I'm very lucky to have her. She's a great girlfriend. One of my goals going into 2008 was to find a girlfiend. I wasn't even necassrily looking for something longterm, but I'm glad it's worked out that way.

I had a lot of really good times in 2008. The coolest had to be going to the Playboy mansion. I still can't believe I was able to do that. I also travelled a lot around the US and made my yearly Aruba trip. My only complaint is that a lot of the trips I went on were to places I had already been. I'm going to make an effort this year to travel to new places and cut out the repeat trips. I plan on going to Asia this year, which will be awesome. I also have a trip to the Kentucky Derby planned. I wouldn't mind making it out to Europe at some point as well.

I took pretty good care of myself in 2008. I let it slip hard the last two weeks, but that's ok. I'm going to continue to focus on my health. My health is very important. Taylor mentioned taking daily vitamins. This is something I've been doing off and on for a few years now. I want to be more dedicated about that.

I hope the holidays went well for all of you and I wish you a great 2009!

Well at least not when he doesn't update his blog. I'm holding down the 5 spot, which I'm pretty happy about. I think CTS pretty much owns me in all other aspects of life.

After the New Orleans debacle, I headed up to my cabin which ended up working out ok. There was a lot of snow up there, so we were able to snowmobile a ton, which was fun. We got up there Saturday afternoon and one of my top priorities was finding a place to watch the Bears game on Sunday. I knew my options would be limited, but they ended up being even worse than I thought. I was able to find a place about 45 minutes away that had NFL ticket. I asked if they would put the Bears game on and they responded, "I guess we could put it on the corner TV." It didn't sound all that great, but I didn't have a choice. If I wanted to see the game, this was going to be my place.

I made sure we got there early so that we could make sure they put the Bears game on. Right as we walked in it was clear that they didn't know what to make of our group - 2 23 year olds, 1 20 yr old and 1 12 yr old. They almost tried to kick us out. They demanded to see our IDs. I pointed out that the 12 year old clearly wasn't of age and stated we just wanted to watch the game. It was made clear that the two of us that were of age were expected to drink. I really had no intention of drinking, but I decided I would buy a beer to appease them. They had about 5 TVs and most were 30in or bigger. There was one tiny ass TV that was being used to display what I believe were lottery numbers. They decided that would be the TV we could watch the Bears game on - see below.


It was a very small TV to say the least. That's my brother sitting at the bar.

The place started to fill up around game time. There were a lot of people coming to watch the Lions lose their 16th game of the season. The clientele consisted completely of hicks. All complete fucking rednecks. They were pounding beers, chain smoking cigs and just bullshitting about hunting and other hick related topics the entire time we were there. The sign for the men's bathroom said "Dick Trickle Blvd." Apparently they have a problem with snitches up there because the stall had 4 or 5 messages written about people being "snitch bitches." 


I was trying to take pictures, but I didn't want it to be known that I was taking pictures. I wish you could see the guy with the glasses and mustache in the background better as he was one of my favorites.

In the end, they were all nice people. It was just clear that we were way out of our element. After the Bears lost a game they definitely should have won I decided it was time to get the bill and head home. We had been eating and drinking (beer and soda) the entire time we were there. I figured the bill would be about $100. I was shocked when I got it and saw it was $33. We had all had lunch, some snacks, probably 8 beers among us and a few sodas and the bill was $33! I couldn't believe it. I almost laughed in their face. On the way out, a Lions fan stated to me, "At least you guys won a few games." He had a point. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience except for the Bears sucking.

I grinded a ton of poker yesterday. I didn't really feel like playing cash games yesterday so I just cued up a ton of SNGs. I ran pretty hot early on and got up about 3k or so. By the end of the day I had cooled off and lost most of it back. I think I ended up about $200. I paid a ton in rake though, so it was a pretty good day overall. Those super turbos are a lot of fun, but man do they have a lot of variance. I still have some leaks to work out, but I'm getting better at them in general.

I started off my day well today. When I'm with my cousins I get on a pretty horrible sleep schedule. They like to stay up really late and night and sleep really late into the day. I end up staying up until at least 2 and sometimes as late as 4 and then sleep until at least noon. Today my mom made me get up at noon to come up and have some breakfast. I was in a bit of a haze and stumbled to the bathroom. I immediately looked to plop down on the toilet. I typically sit down to pee first thing in the morning because I just don't have the energy or motivation to stand up. Anyway, I didn't really assess the situation and just looked to sit down immediately, so I started the movement to sit down. Then, BAM, it hit me that I didn't look to see if the seat was down. This was all in like a split second. I quickly got my hand down and confirmed it wasn't down and violently twisted my body to avoid a splash in the water. I was successful, but banged into the bathtub pretty hard. Good start to the day. Only once in my life have I crashed into the toilet without the seat up. I hope to never do it again. It sucks. I wonder if women ever do that since they always have to sit down to use the bathroom.

I'm in the car heading up to my cabin now. I'm going to be up here for a few days and then fly back to Chicago so that I will be there for New Year's eve. My plan is to get some relaxing done. I'd like to read at least a book or two. I have 3 options to chose from. John Grisham's new book (big Grisham fan), 1984 (about 50 pages into it, but it's not too interesting yet) or Liar's Poker (been meaning to read it for awhile and I recently read an article on the financial meltdown that was written by same author). I think I'm gonna go with Liar's Poker. I also have a copy of Cole's ebook. I started reading the first few pages of that and it seems really good. I think I can bang that out pretty quickly, but I'm not sure I want to have poker on the mind right now. I'll definitely write more about that book as I read it.

According to facebook, one of my good poker friends - Brian Wideman - got engaged last night. I want to give a big congrats to him and his fiance, Candice! That's exciting stuff. They have been dating for a long time and are a great couple. I wish them nothing but happiness going forward.

Christmas was good. I was ready to get out of Detroit though. I had a trip to New Orleans planned with a few of my good friends. I have never been, so I was really looking forward to it. I got up at 5am this morning so that I could make my 720 flight. I was flying back to Chicago and then meeting up with my friends and taking a non stop flight to New Orleans. I was concerned about the weather but felt much better when I woke up and saw everything seemed to be good in Detroit. Apparently, Chicago was another story. My flight was "on time" until about 10 minutes before we were supposed to take off. They then tagged it with a delayed indefinitely tag. Awesome. After a hour, I knew I wasn't going to make my connection, but I was still optimistic about getting to New Orleans. I figured that getting back to Chicago presented me with the most options, so I was still looking to get back to Chicago. We boarded our plane at about 930 and I was feeling pretty good. About a hour and a half later I wasn't feeling so good. We were still sitting on the runway and they decided we weren't going to take off. That meant that they drove back to the gate so we could get off the plane. I then started looking into the possibilities from Detroit. Unfortunately Detroit sucks and there were essentially none. I could take a flight that had 2 layovers and I would need to be on standby for every leg of the flight. Fuck that. Basically my only option was to try again the next day. The thing is that we were only going for 3 days. We were also planning on going to the Rockets - Hornets game today. I had bought some sick seats. 2nd row off the court. The fact that I was missing that game and an entire day made me come to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth it to go. So I'm not back at my aunt's house in beautiful Detroit and just feeling miserable about the whole situation. Luckily I bought insurance on my tickets so I shouldn't be out the money on them. Although, something tells me that they will make it as difficult as possible to recoup the money.

I'm gonna head up to our family cabin for a few days. There is a lot of snow up there so it should be fun. Normally, I'd be pretty pumped about going up there. I just feel really down about missing this trip. I was really looking forward to it. I'm not the type of person to get excited about things, so to have something I was excited about fall apart at the last minute just feels like shit.

I used to reserve my time for reading when I traveled. I didn't have internet access back then and there wasn't much else to do but read. Nowadays, I pretty much have internet access everywhere I go. It's good and it's bad. I don't read much anymore. Today I spent my car ride to Detroit grinding. I had a pretty nice day and made about 2k playing $160 super turbos and $2/4nl. I kind of wished I had read though. I brought a few books that I want to read and I didn't touch any of them. I think I'm definitely addicted to the internet. I'm always checking bs stuff that I don't even really care about. I just use it to kill time whether it be on my computer or on my phone. I wonder if I could go a week without internet. Probably not. The bottom line is that I wouldn't put myself through that. I NEED it.

I really got away from playing NLHE cash games in 2008. It was mostly the devil that is PLO. I've pretty much agreed with myself that my temperament is not good for PLO. I don't have what it takes to stay tilt free in a game that will absolutely crush you if you tilt. There is just too much variance for me to ultimately be a big winner in that game. As far as I know, I can still grind out a solid profit at the $2/4 nl cash games. I just had basically no urge to play them. I think that in 2008 I really regained the value of money in a lot of ways. There was a time where I felt I was above grinding the lower games even though I was struggling at the higher games. I wanted a quick profit to "make it worth my time." One of the biggest downsides to playing a lot of poker and succeeding is that you just stop caring about money. It took me having a terrible month live, online and spending wise in Vegas this summer to wake me up. After I returned from Vegas I started to realize that money was real and that I needed to try to find respect for it again. Slowly but surely I've been getting better and better at that. I think I finally knew I had come a long way when I started grinding SNGs a few months ago. I haven't even done well in them (crazy swings - post to come on that), but I knew I was making solid money from being red, so I kept grinding. I'm proud of myself for that. Hopefully, I'll get to the point where I'm doing better in them sooner rather than later. Anyway, I'm rambling. My point is that I want to play more $2/4nl cash for two reasons. First, I want to make money and that's a good place to do it at. Second, I want to make some mid stakes videos again. It's been awhile since I've made any instructional videos just because I didn't feel good enough at PLO to do it on my own and I wasn't playing NLHE cash. So look for me in the 2/4 games and wish me luck. Ok end rant.

We're almost to my aunt's house. About 45 minutes ago my mom realized she had forgot the salad for Christmas dinner so we stopped in a local Meijers to grab some salad. I cannot believe how much of a zoo that place was. The part I found most amusing was the first line you got to literally had about 50 people in it. I walked about 50 feet down and got in a line that had about 5 people in it. A commonplace IQ test if you will. Many people failed tonight.

I'm still in shock from how the Bears game ended up last night. If you didn't watch it, you missed one of the crazier endings I've seen in awhile. Basically, the end consisted of the Bears getting a first down by an inch, scoring a touchdown, followed by a terrible squib kickoff to the packers where an inexplicable horsecoller penalty occurred. This gave the Packers great field position and it seemed as though the game was over as they were quickly well within field goal range. The Bears managed to block a field goal, send the game to overtime, win the coin toss and then get far enough down the field to make the game winning field goal. Crazy shit! That means the Bears playoff hopes are still alive. That being said, if they play like they did last night, they won't beat the Texans let alone get anywhere in the playoffs. I'm just glad to still have something to cheer for.

Lately I've had a beef with homeless people. There are a lot of homeless people in Chicago and I try to give them a buck or two when I pass them, especially when it's cold outside. However, it so happens that a few times lately I have given a homeless man some money and for whatever reason I have doubled back by him within 20 minutes or so. Every time this has happened, the homeless man again asks me for money like I never gave him any. I always respond with something like, "I already got ya man." They never remember me and seem to ignore the comment. I always thought homeless people genuinely appreciated it when you tossed them some change. I'm starting to think otherwise now. If they can't remember you 5 minutes later, they must not have been too excited about your donation.

Yesterday, I had to go pick up the empty Christmas party kegs from the loft we rented. Let's just say it was rather awkward. Me - "yea...sorry about that shit on the wall." Them - "yea. what the fuck was that. your friends show no respect." Me - "yea...i can't believe someone did that. i didn't know the guy, but still...So, yea, where are those kegs at?" It didn't help the cleaning people we hired to come in after the party did a piss poor job. Furthermore, one of the kegs still had quite a bit of beer in it, so I had to hang around and empty it out so I could carry it down the stairs. The woman stood over me the entire time making conversation. Good times.

We asked the cleaning people to go back yesterday afternoon, but they never showed. I got an angry call from the girl. later in the afternoon. I was smart enough to pass on that call, but from the message I could tell she was even more upset at this point. I don't know where the cleaning people were and I'll be honest, now that I have all my stuff out, I don't care so much. I'm still mad about them lying to me about the elevator and bathroom. I'm also rather baffled that this whole ordeal has been such a big problem to them. If they do this on a regular basis (rent out their apartment for parties with 100+ people) I gotta think they are used to the place getting fucked up. In my opinion, they are absolutely retarded if they think they can rent out their place to 150 strangers with an excessive amount of alcohol being served and not expect some things to go wrong. We paid them a good sum to use that space. They don't get to rent it out with no strings attached. I still think things went relatively smoothly.

I took a look at my resolution post from last year. It was pretty interesting. I'll address that and my thoughts for 2009 in an upcoming post.

Merry Christmas!

Somehow I got moved up to the third spot on the blog page. I'm not sure why, but I like it. I'll take all the help I can get.

I had a pretty crazy weekend. On Friday, we decided to check out the newly renovated Horseshoe Casino in Hammond. I had heard really good things about it, so I had high hopes. They also provided a trolley that would take us to and from the casino for free. I have to admit that it's nice as far as the layout/building/etc. The main problem I had with it was that it was really crowded and the table limits were high. The lowest blackjack table you could find when we got there was $25. That's fine. I had been playing there about a hour when they told me that they were raising it to $50 and we weren't grandfathered in. That pissed me off and I proceeded to bitch to the floor manager. But she just laughed and said, "this ain't Vegas, honey." I guess there wasn't much I could do. I wasn't too keen on playing $50 a hand for both me and my girlfriend who I was staking. We were both up a bit, but quit soon after the table got raised when we were both back to even. I guess I can't really complain. I got my drinks and tips paid for and got out even. I'm not sure I'll be going back there to gamble. Maybe I'll go to play poker sometime.

Saturday was a busy day for me. I started it off by going to the UNC - Valpo game. My financial adviser invited me and a friend to join them in their box. It had been awhile since I was in a box, so that was great. The game was a blowout as expected, but I had fun watching UNC put on a show while enjoying free food and beer. I took my brother who I hadn't seen in awhile. It was good to hang out with him.

After the game, I chilled at my place for awhile. I had some errands to run before the party, but I wanted to put them off for as long as possible. The problem with doing this was that it started to snow pretty hard. My car is a 2001 neon with windshield wipers that don't really work. It's not good for driving in a blizzard. I had to get the kegs, solo cups, and mixers though. It wasn't like I could just skip this trip. The problems started when I tried to get my car out of my parking spot in the alley behind my apartment. The snow was pretty deep and the little neon wasn't liking it. It took 20 minutes of rocking forward and backwards and getting pushed from some friends to get out. Once I hit the road I was struggling to see out my windshield. The problems got worse when I got to the local alcohol superstore and they told me they had no kegs at all. Shit! That meant I had to drive a lot further to get the kegs. I eventually made it to the other store got my stuff and got to the loft where we were having the party. They had told us when we checked the place out that their elevator worked. When I got there I realized they lied because a different person told me it hadn't worked in months. That meant we had to somehow get everything - including 2 kegs- up 4 flights of winding stairs. I got all the mixers and everything else up and was sweating like a beast. I then called up Taylor and told him to have his friends get the kegs up. They were able to do that. Big thanks to them.

The party went really well. I'd say we had about 150 people show up. I was a little concerned about things getting broken, but we did ok in that department. Someone did decide to shit on the wall in the stairwell. I'm not kidding. Someone actually shit on the wall in the stairwell. Dropped trough and just let one rip on the wall. We were able to figure out who it was and kick him out. The people that lived there didn't think it was nearly as funny as everyone else did. It's ok though. They also lied to me about having two bathrooms. They only had one that they let us use. Karma is a bitch, ain't it?

I hated the old blogs. Completely hated them. I hated them enough that I really had no interest in blogging. I think we've now worked out most of the kinks and have them looking a ton better. The other thing is that we cleared all of the views. Think of it as a motivational piece for all you bloggers out there. The truth is, I'm probably the guy hurt the most by the clearing. I used to have a good blog, built up a ton of views and then stopped having a good blog. Therefore, most of my views are from long, long ago. I'm going to try to update this bad buy a lot more often to keep my views at a somewhat respectable level.

I have a desktop that I use at work and a laptop I use at home. Every now and then I'll leave aim and gtalk signed in when I leave to go home. Always a big mistake. When I get in the next morning, I have about 20 IMs saying, "hey" with no response from me. Kind of makes me look like a jackass. The other thing is I get IMs from people I don't know. I'm only on aim during the day and never at night so apparently there are some people that would like to talk to me that don't go on during the day. I got one IM last night from a guy saying, "yo, what's your cell. I lost all my numbers." I had never even seen his aim name before. Go figure.

I've decided that being a big Mariah Carey fan wasn't enough. I'm now officially a big Beyonce fan. Of course she has those retarded slow songs like "Boy" that no one likes, but I love her uptempo stuff. I keep wanting to hear that single ladies song that's been on the radio. You gotta love her classics like check on it and upgrade u. My favorite commercial on tv right now is the Beyonce/directv upgrade u commercial. Honestly, I feel like I shouldn't like that stuff. What can you do though? 

Ezra just gave me a great quote that I gotta blog about. We were talking about how girls get sick all the time and have terrible immune systems and he said, "yea, girls sucks. Sometimes, I wish I were gay." I replied, "haha, I don't agree." He then said, "Yea, you're right, but if girls didn't have great bodies, I might think otherwise." Pretty funny shit.

I had a dream - well, more like a nightmare - last night. I was just getting into Aruba and they had torn down the Radisson. They were apparently redesigning it to make it a badass huge resort like the Atlantis. The thing is that I don't like the Atlantis. I think it's too big and it reminds me too much of Vegas. I much prefer the smaller and easier to navigate Radisson in Aruba. In the dream I was very upset that this was happening. I have been considering going to the PCA this year. I think that dream was a sign not to go.

I just spell checked tihs blog using the software included above. Apparently our blog spell checker doesn't recognize the word blog. Good stuff.