CARDRUNNERS

been grinding a decent amount since late october.

plo the last 3.5 months:

 





As you can see i've been running pretty well but i have improved a ton in the past 3 months and feel very confident in my 50bb and lower plo game.  im not all that great at deepstacked plo, but after grinding out a bit more profit im going to put in some time at lower stakes and watch some videos and put in some effort to get good at 100bb+.

I've also been playing a decent amount of RUSH POKER.  it's pretty fun.  i started out playing the 6max games and the first 3-4 hours i played i was just dumping money getting adjusted to the games and not being able to take it seriously cause it was only 100nl.  here are some funny hands and my hilaribad graph:


***** Hand History for Game 17827042199 ***** (Full Tilt)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, January 22, 10:10:38 ET 2010
Table Afterburner (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Seat 1: employeenum12 ( $145.00 USD )
Seat 2: d1ickerchen ( $132.60 USD )
Seat 3: Arnz18 ( $293.55 USD )
Seat 4: Ryan Daut ( $674.55 USD )
Seat 5: kecchino ( $52.00 USD )
Seat 6: mihain ( $663.05 USD )
Arnz18 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
Ryan Daut posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Ryan Daut [  7c 8c ]
kecchino folds
mihain folds
employeenum12 folds
d1ickerchen raises [$3.00 USD]
Arnz18 raises [$11.50 USD]
Ryan Daut raises [$34.00 USD]
d1ickerchen folds
Arnz18 calls [$23.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9c, Jc, Js ]
Arnz18 checks
Ryan Daut bets [$54.00 USD]
Arnz18 calls [$54.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
Arnz18 checks
Ryan Daut bets [$585.55 USD]
Arnz18 calls [$204.55 USD]
Ryan Daut shows [7c, 8c ]
Arnz18 shows [As, Ac ]
Ryan Daut wins $381.00 USD
** Dealing River ** [ Jd ]
Arnz18 wins $587.10 USD from main pot

After playing only plo a few months my nl game was pretty off.  And when your nl game is off retarded hands like this happen.

***** Hand History for Game 17824320269 ***** (Full Tilt)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, January 22, 08:22:29 ET 2010
Table Afterburner (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: Ryan Daut ( $180.40 USD )
Seat 2: 4HighGood ( $112.40 USD )
Seat 3: mihain ( $1274.70 USD )
Seat 4: 828_Frank_White ( $131.95 USD )
Seat 5: Vegas Shayne ( $84.40 USD )
Seat 6: Monch23 ( $100.00 USD )
4HighGood posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
mihain posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Ryan Daut [  Jc Ah ]
828_Frank_White folds
Vegas Shayne calls [$1.00 USD]
Monch23 folds
Ryan Daut raises [$4.00 USD]
4HighGood folds
mihain calls [$3.00 USD]
Vegas Shayne calls [$3.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4d, 3c, 3s ]
mihain checks
Vegas Shayne checks
Ryan Daut bets [$8.00 USD]
mihain raises [$22.00 USD]
Vegas Shayne folds
Ryan Daut calls [$14.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]
mihain bets [$40.00 USD]
Ryan Daut calls [$40.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
mihain bets [$1208.70 USD]
Ryan Daut calls [$114.40 USD]
mihain wins $1094.30 USD
mihain shows [7h, 8h ]
mihain wins $362.30 USD from main pot
Ryan Daut doesn't show [Jc, Ah ]
 

just a funny hand.


and my lolgraph:



 

After that valley I started getting a decent grasp on the games and decided to switch over to playing the full ring rush games.  I've done pretty well in them and feel like i have a good solid approach to those games now:




Would anyone be interested in seeing a rush video?  i dont think anyone has made one yet, and id be willing to do a live one if you guys want.  it wouldnt have that much great commentary cause stuff is happening so fast, but id show my overall approach to the games and id get in plenty of hands in a video or two.

So overall poker has gone pretty well the last 3.5 months.  I've been making 275 an hour playing over 270 hours and am up a little over 100k including rakeback.  It's nice to put in a good amount of hours a month and push out 30k months consistently again.


other than poker ive just been dicking around in arizona.  we have a really good crew out here and theres always something to do.  josh (reddog133) and clint (beatifulman) both live within 20 minutes and we have a lot of other friends out here so theres always something to do. 

isnt that cute?  picture was taken at a sushi place near us called geisha gogo, not the same as the geisha house in LA or other places, but a lot of fun.  we live in a great area called oldtown scottsdale and we are right in the middle of everything, so we can walk to a lot of good restaurants and bars, its like college but even better.  the girls out here are just completely unreal hot, im seriously amazed everytime i go out, i love arizona.

im rooming with brandon schaefer, but he just left for a month to go to seattle, new york and then israel with ansky so i have been working out and playing a lot the past couple weeks.  ill post some pictures of our apartment in a week or so when i stop being lazy.

after a few months off i finally went back to jiu jitsu.  ive started training under another royler gracie black belt named megaton out here.  the gym is pretty high intensity but i like it a lot.  ive gone to 4 classes the past 2 weeks  and am almost back at the point i was in october. 

so far this year i have gone to 3 of the easier classes and one advanced class.  in the easier classes ive tapped out a few people with mostly armbars and keylocks from side control or mount and have only been tapped out once.  it was a little disappointing to get tapped out by a white belt after training for almost a year but my guard games are pretty rusty and he did a nice mount choke on me so i cant complain too much.  my cardio is also really bad now, but its improving pretty quickly and i should be in good shape again in a few weeks.  i am going to get a few private lessons and work on my bottom game because i dont feel comfortable there anymore. 

the advanced class was no gi and was much much tougher and consisted of basically all purple, brown and black belts.  i just got my ass handed to me for an hour straight.  but its good practice and ill probably go to that class once a week along with maybe a muay thai class as well to work on my striking a bit.

other than jiu jitsu ive been going hiking about 3 times a week.  i live about 5 minutes away from Camelback mountain which is a moderately strenuous hike.  It usually takes about 90 minutes to hike up and down and its a good workout. 

here are a few pictures of it:




view from the top with an exhausted schaefer:




i guess thats enough rambling for now.  take it easy guys

 I havent made a poker post in a long time so i guess i should now.

about 3 weeks ago i realized that ive been really lazy with grinding and that i should put in a lot of hours to prepare for an expensive december backing wise and hopefully make some money to offset the variance a bit.

i have mostly been playing cap plo, with some deeper plo and midstakes full ring mixed in although the results in those havent been so good.  i feel really comfortable in the cap games and its been going very well.  including rakeback im up a little over 30k the past 3 weeks which is really good for me as i havent played a lot of hours since maybe april.



i recorded a video playing 4 tables of cap plo cause i think its a good transition for people who are NL players to move into plo and the NL games have been pretty hard recently.  ill finish that up with the added audio sometime this week and get that uploaded.

i really should be playing a lot more cash, ive just been so lazy this year.  ive maybe played 200k hands total and my results really arent that good.  not including rakeback or tournaments, im probably up about 30k in plo, 5-10k in mixed games and maybe another 20k in nl.  thats some pretty terrible results given how badly ive done in online mtts this year ( i dont think i have a 10k cash all year in maybe 200 mtts lol) and that the games will only get harder in the future.  

i should be putting in lots more hours but i got super super lazy in april, may, june, july, and september.  i put in a good amount of hours in august playing tournaments and mixed games, but nothing really came out of that as i lost a bit in mtt and made some in mixed games.  id like to put in a lot of hours from now til the end of the year and maybe i can finish the year strong and make another 50k before its over.  thats pretty optimistic given its the holiday season, but its nice to have at least some sort of goal for poker as i have not had any ambitions in a while.


im also moving to arizona in about a week.  going to rent a place with brandon schaefer for 6 months and see how we like it out there.  there just isnt much for me to do in new jersey as most of my friends have normal jobs and i hate the cold.  i also have a lot of friends out there already so it should be a lot of fun.  i cant find any really good pictures online, but let me post what i can find for now until im out there and can take some for myself:







hope you guys enjoy the video when it comes out, sorry its been so long to make one, but ive really been off of grinding for a long time and wasnt inspired to make one.  take it easy

I have done a lot since the last blog entry.  I have been to seattle, arizona, los angeles, catalina island, philadelphia, atlantic city, new york and hoboken.  I have really good pictures from catalina which are still undeveloped cause I was using an underwater disposable camera, and ill get those uploaded when they get developed finally.


BUt I am home now for an indefinite amount of time and have gotten back to my lifting, biking and jiu jitsu routine.  I said about a month ago i would take some pictures along some of my bike rides, and I finally got around to it yesterday.  Here is the path i went along:




Most of the ride is fairly flat except for the street near my house which is really really steep and a few other pretty steep inclines in the middle of the ride.

my bike:



view down my street, cant even see the bottom from the top, really steep hill:



halfway down the street, looking up and down, its about a 1/3 mile long incline that is especially tough cause I have to come up it at the end of my ride:



Heres the local train station that takes me to ny penn station and that I cross over to avoid some busy streets without sidewalks:



Some pretty nice houses I pass on my ride.  Seeing expensive houses is usually pretty inspiring pokerwise cause I always think to myself how I want to live in a monster house but they are obviously expensive, especially in this area, and it makes me want to grind....kind of, lets not get too ahead of ourselves:





the school i attended from 3rd to 5th grade which is next to the high school i went to:



the ass end of my high school.  also shows our football field.  in hs i played football and baseball, and until our junior year our home games were played on saturday afternoon.  in between sophomore and junior years, our coach put us to work doing yard work for people in exchange for donations to our booster club.  It was pretty fucking annoying doing like 10 hours of yard work a week over the summer without monetary compensation, but it paid for the lights on our field which allowed for friday night games and brought in a lot more fans.




next to the football field is the piece of shit baseball field we used as our home field our freshman year of high school.  its really complete garbage, the infield is a torn up with little patches of grass in whats supposed to be skin, the outfield has tons of holes and patches and weird spots and its a pretty short field with the trees being only about 280-330 feet out all the way around, so there were a lot of homers here.




our football practice field, just seeing it makes me cringe and brings back some awful memories lol:



varsity baseball field, pretty beat up right now cause not in season but its usually in good condition for the spring/summer:




after passing the baseball field and going a bit of a ways, i hit a wildlife reserve called the great swamp.  its mostly contained within that huge green blob surrounding the "Lord Stirling Park", but it extends pretty far outward past my ride.  here are a bunch of pictures from the swamp:









down a bit of a ways there is a wild bird rehabilitation center called the raptor trust.  I tried to take some good pictures of the birds of prey but it was hard with double fenced cages making the pictures come out pretty fuzzy.  I managed to get a few reasonable shots of eagles (including a bald eagle), hawks, and owls.  The bottom one is a really beautiful snow owl that I could not capture properly cause of the fences, but oh well:












Further along my ride, here is a view of the outskirts of the great swamp:



Looks like jurassic park back there:




Ah shit, no entry.... EXCEPT FOR MOTHER FUCKERS ON BIKES:



suck it no entry gate, im on the other side:



cool view of the wooded street:



some more baller houses:




osborn pond:



a pretty steep incline, cant see most of the steep part here as it starts getting really difficult as the road turns at the back of the picture.  At this point in the ride its not trivial to get up this hill but once over this one its pretty flat until im back at my street.



southard park, which is near where my grandma used to live so i came here a lot on weekends when i was younger.  Both my parents worked, so my grandma would stay with us during the day and go back home at night when i was too small to stay at home unsupervised.  she didnt have a car, so she moved to basking ridge from brooklyn when i was about 6 to make it easier to get home.




my favorite climbing tree when i was young.  it was pretty easy for me as an 8 year old to get up to the 6 foot branches and then i was able to climb up about 15 more feet, which at the time made me feel like i was on top of the world:



grandmas place from when i was 7 til about 15, now she lives in a nursing home cause she has severe dementia and can no longer care for herself:



horse farm:




I was pretty tired after this ride.  It took about 2.5 hours and I estimate it was about 20 miles.  It is my favorite path to go on, but there are a couple other good paths I go on with beautiful real estate that REALLY inspires me to grind more.  Ill take some pictures of that another time.


I havent played too much poker lately.  Played a bit of cash down in atlantic city, and 2 sundays worth of tournaments with no worthwhile results.  I am going to start playing NL cash again and hopefully get a video done in the next few weeks as I have not done one for a while, although I have not really played very much the last 5 months.


I guess thats it for now as this entry is already really long.




oh and finally, WAR VITOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry I didnt update my blog for the duration of the time i was in vegas.  I guess I will start out with vegas stuff, move towards personal stuff around home, then talk about MMA at the end, so theres something for everyone.


I had a really really fun summer.  I basically hung out by the pool a lot, partied a good amount, and didnt play all that much poker.  Most of the people in my house had friends visiting at some point or another so there was always something for me to do and people to hang out with. 


When I say I didnt play all that much poker I really mean it.  I only played two events and probably less than 15,000 hands online in the 2 months I was gone.  It was still a pretty good summer monetarily as a couple of my horses did really well, so im happy about that.  The previous few summers I was much more focused on poker and didnt have as much fun or enjoy myself like I did this year.  2007 was an amazing summer and my house just had a blast, 2008 was a good summer, but it just wasnt all that memorable besides a few really awesome nights, whereas this year I made so many new friends and had great nights maybe 4 or 5 days every week.


Fitness wise I was pretty active for the first month I was in vegas, and the last 30 days I became the laziest piece of shit.  The first 30 days I went on a bunch of hikes with some of my roommates at red rock canyon and they were way more difficult than I expected.  Here are some cool pictures Brandon Schaefer, Steve Buchanan and I took at the top of the steepest/most difficult trail at redrock called turtlehead:




timed picture we took after we conquered the beast:





its over 2000 feet high, more than double the altitude of any other hike





i wasnt as good at going back down the slope as going up, im lagging behind a bit:





it was pretty cloudy, we were lucky we didnt get caught in a huge rainstorm and also to have it not be too hot or we would have roasted





BJJ/MMAwise, I didnt train all that much this summer.  I took one no gi bjj class at marc laimon's in a class where I was by far the least experienced, least athletic person in the group.  I went with my friend will durkee who I rolled with for a while.  Hes a really good wrestler, good athlete and also better technically skilled at jiu jitsu than I am so he just continuously tapped me over and over which helps in a way, but its nice to also roll with people who are closer to my level of skill. 


I also took one boxing class with Elky.  He was going to a trainer named Dewey Cooper on the southside of vegas who really knew his shit.  I learned so much from just that one class and I am really disappointed that I didnt make it out again, but I am glad that I at least have some sort of striking base now and if I got a heavy bag at home I would at least be able to do some of the drills I learned from dewey.


I had a gym membership at 24 hour fitness for the first month and used it probably about 8-10 times, so overall i probably worked out about 3-4 times a week for the first month I was out there, so even though I didnt do very much physically active stuff besides dick around in the pool for the last month I stayed pretty fit.


Anyway, I got back to new jersey a few weeks ago and it didnt take me long to go pretty stir crazy.  There isnt a whole lot to do in basking ridge during the week cause my friends work so I was working out every day, sometimes twice a day, with the first being about a 90 minute bike ride through some very hilly terrain and the second being a stretch/lift/abs/jump rope workout at the gym.


Here is one of my bike routes:






I really like riding to Pleasant Valley Park which is one of the green blobs on the map above, but the weather has been really terrible with rain falling almost every day, so i havent bothered to ride out there cause it's probably really sloppy.  I guess one of these days i will bring my camera on my ride and take some pictures along the way cause there are some really cool sights and houses I admire a lot. 


The rides are really strenuous as the starting point is probably about 400-500 feet of elevation above the park, so on the way home I am always pushing myself pretty hard.  I have also gone back on my raptor like diets and trying to get back into my best shape possible. 


After my rides I have been experimenting with my protein shakes.  In the past i would almost always make a milk based smoothie with whey protein, banana, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and yogurt.  Lately I have been making my smoothies with orange juice, blueberries, strawberries, whey protein, 1-2 tablespoons of flax, and 1-2 tablespoons of acai powder, some goji berries and some sesame seeds.  I really like these new ones (i also think they are much better for me) and I'm going to start mixing it up a bit more and adding new fruits and stuff like peanut butter to my shakes.


I have also gone back on a pretty healthy diet, trying to stay away from white breads, red meat, pasta, and leaning towards fruits, vegetables, brown rice, salads, chicken, yogurts, granolas, etc.  So most of my meals are either indian food, whole foods salad bar stuff, healthy organic protein bars, my smoothies, and high fiber cereals with dried fruit.  In just a couple weeks I can already notice some big changes in how i feel and how i look, as well as some big improvements in my cardio for bike rides.


After being home for a couple weeks i was already bored so i went back out to LA for a week.  It was a fun time, I spent some time in san diego, and actually played a lot of poker.  Most of the time i was playing I was 1-2 tabling bigger tournaments cause its FTOPS and i was really able to see spots well and play my best for the most part.  I got deep in basically every big tourney i played and thought i played really well for the most part.


There was one couple hour stretch where I was on a really bad table and wasnt able to play all that well.  It was deep in the 2500 6max and my table was insanely aggro, all my bluffs stopped working, i went pretty card dead, and i fell below 60bb then i started getting 3bet a lot.  i have a lot of trouble playing the 40-60bb stack in really aggro games and its def something i am going to spend a lot of time working on in the coming weeks.  i am pretty glad i had this stretch of bad play mixed in with about 35-40 hours of good, clear headed, focused play cause it really helped point me in some directions where i can improve my game.


Besides playing tourneys i have been grinding the 7 game mix on ftp a lot, anywhere from 40/80 all the way down to 4/8 just cause i really want to get hands in and i dont care too much about playing smaller stakes.  I intended to make a video on 7game when I got home, but as I played more I started to realize I am pretty weak in both stud and stud8.  So im going to put in a bunch of hours and read some books/material online, maybe try to find a video or two to help improve me in those 2 games.  I feel very very comfortable in razz, o8 and limit holdem, i just want to bring the other stud games up to a level i feel comfortable with before I start making some instructional videos on it.


Thats about it for now i guess.  ill post entries more often i promise.  ill also do a recap on some mma stuff that has happened and a preview of events to come in the next few entries.

If you got out mid last year you are very smart.  My blog has sucked royal ass lately.  Sorry for the lack of updates but ive just been real apathetic lately about poker so i havent played that much past 5 weeks.


After my last blog entry on march 5th i went to nebraska for about 20-25 days.  it was a ton of fun.  i stayed with nick, joel and mitch who are all poker players that went to lincoln for college and are staying in a place out there.  we went out basically every night, played a few rounds of golf, watched the ncaa and played minimal amounts of poker.


I came home around the 30th of march and since then i havent done a whole lot of anything.  I have worked out maybe 6 times, went to the driving range a few times, beat the godfather 2 which probably took around 24 hours of playing, played a bunch of scoop, played almost no cash game hands, watched a ton of tv and movies, and i havent gone to bjj yet.  its pretty pathetic.


so i made an mspaint a little while back and i dont know why i never posted it here.  a few months back i posted a blog entry showing a yeti that mig, blake and roothlus made while they were in vegas and it snowed for the first time in 30 years.  heres the blog entry i made that shows the yeti creation:

http://blogs.cardrunners.com/Daut44/mig-blake-root...




well anyway, i decided to draw some pictures of what happened later that day when blair tried to fuck with the yeti.  he didnt believe that the yeti was really a badass and this is what went down:





if its too small to read, click this link:   http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Daut/BLAIRVSYETI....

It was a pretty graphic scene but the yeti doesnt mess around.



I also took some pictures of my jacked up phone.  about a month ago i messed up my phone so that it wont charge unless i push up the charger a significant amount.  so basically if i put a little platform to the left of the phone and put the charger in it would work, but otherwise it wouldnt recharge the battery.  


normally this wouldnt be a problem, id just go get a new phone but i have a pretty sick game of brickbreaker going and i dont want to end it.  then i lost my phone charger and only had a car charger left which made it really hard to deal with because nothing stays still in the car so putting something like a notepad next to my phone doesnt charge it in the car.  So what i did was build a platform out of a rolled up postit note and an expired barnes and noble card.  check it out:












so besides my massive brickbreaker score and everything else i mentioned not much is new in my life.  last night i was really bored and up late so i started writing haikus for ufc 97 which is 4 hours away from ppv starting (undercard probably 90 minutes to 2 hours away).  here are the ones i came up with:



Anderson vs Leites.....anderson by TKO:

a haiku from anderson to thales:
thales starts hopeful
exits crumbled and forlorn
i still has the belt


antidote cageside
spider bites are poisonous
knees transport toxin


sorry okami
you will never get a shot
you are too boring


Silva has the flu
Not even bubonic plague
Would help leites win


from gsp to anderson:
weighed one eighty two
knocked out thales in round three
i was not impressed

chuck of old is back
rua cares not and kills him
old chuck just retire


rua has bad knees
they make for a good excuse
when you gas out fast


Chuck counter punches
Shoguns attack is frenzied
chuck wins by murder


Lacking cardio
his legacy is tarnished
dont care, WAR SHOGUN


Spring in montreal
While it is warm further south
The iceman is here


U.F.C. bans stomps
what good would they even be
If chuck wont stay down


from dana to chuck in a haiku that happens to rhymes:
you were once the face
now you are just a disgrace
get out of my place

kryzysztof hates vowels
brian stann hates doing jiu jitsu
consonant owned


luis is ice cold
snapping arms at fight for troops
wont scare this monster


antoni is dutch
cheick will ground and pound a win
dutch suck at wrestling

 

vinny loves the ground
falls like a bitch when punched
you cannot teach heart


quarry likes to fight
Foes tie his limbs in pretzels
quarry hates to fight


no flying heel hooks
grant has seen pride highlight reels
find a new gimmick

I was planning on going to bjj on tuesday, thursday and saturday this week.  On tuesday i slept in til about 1245 so i missed the first class.  The night class was the MMA no holds barred class and i didnt want to go this week because there are a few guys fighting this saturday so i figured it would be best if they just sparred with each other and the instructors and i'd kind of be in the way.  anyway i got a chance to go tonight and it was packed so i had plenty of people to roll with.


During the instruction time we spent about 45 minutes on gi chokes from the guard, the bane of mr benefields existence.  It started off with just breaking the guy on top's posture and hands allowing the bottom player to get on the inside.  Basically if you are on the bottom, there are 2 places your opponent will put his hands.  Either he will hold your lapel or hold your belt/hips.  Putting his hands in other places like either the mat or extended toward one of your arms is really bad for him as it sets up kimuras, armbars, triangles and sweeps. 

So basically if his hands are up on your lapel, do a sort of rip move underneath them and get both hands on the inside.  If his hands are down by your hips, do a swim move and push them away, then use your legs to pull him up towards you to get into the same position as the rip move gets you.  from here there are a few options.  One of my favorite is to wrap my left arm around his right arm, pinning it beneath me/to the mat and grab the opposite collar.  From here i can open my guard and go for an omaplata, armbar or sweep and have a lot of control on the position.  But during this class we just worked on grabbing the back of the collar with an underhand grip, keeping that elbow closed and close to our body, and then working in the second hand.  We learned 3 variations of chokes, the 3rd of which ill just completely ignore as it was a little more advanced and i didnt feel too comfortable with it.

1.  The first is the standard cross underhand gi choke.  Here is the grip you are going for, notice how deep into the collar you ahve to get your hands:



After the first hand is in, allow some space to get the second hand into the collar and finish the choke.  This is very basic and we have practiced this a lot in class.  If the guy lets you get the 2nd hand in, you can either finish the choke if he doesnt defend, or sweep him to mount if he does stop it with his hands.


2.  The second is to grab the left side of his collar (or the right and just reverse the hand positions) with both hands having the right hand on bottom but still deep into the collar and the left hand on top.  from here put your left foot in his hip and bring your right leg up his back sort of like going for an armbar and slide your thumb along his gi until it gets to the other side but this time grab the collar with an overhand grip.  now pull your right arm towards you


After we went over all the chokes we rolled a bunch.  We got into groups of 3 with people around our size and we did a little round robin in our groups with 3 minute periods of rolling.  First i rolled with vinny who is a 4 stripe white belt that i probably have about 25-30 pounds on.  Basically you start out with 0 stripes and as you progress and get better the instructors award you a stripe every so often, usually a few months.  You get 4 stripes and then the following promotion is to the next belt.  So vinny is one of the more advanced white belts but i have a little bit of size on him.  We started on our knees and i pushed him back so i was in his half butterfly guard.  he scissor sweeped me and got me on my back but i got to full guard.  from there we spent a few minutes just jockeying for position, him trying to pass, me trying to get either a gi choke we practiced during class or an armbar.  nobody advanced and after 3 minutes our instructor jason blew a whistle to stop. 

i took a 3 minute break while vinny rolled with a newly appointed blue belt mark who was about his size.  after a few minutes they stopped and i rolled with mark.  pretty much the same exact result that happened with vinny.  i was on top, got swept, retained guard, he couldnt pass.  however i did do a little bit better job attacking.  i managed to swim under his arms and get a hold of his left arm as i wrote about above.  i had a lot of trouble doing anything though and this position just ended up a stalemate.  i probably should have gone more for a sweep instead of trying to get an omaplata on him as im not all that flexible and he had pretty good control over my right arm/leg preventing me from turning too much.  eventually i got tired, he got out and passed right as the whistle blew.  at this point i was pretty exhausted but now i had to roll one last round with vinny.

basically i just got steamrolled that last round.  i started on top, got swept, but this time my legs were pretty tired so i didnt have much defense against his pass.  he got to side control, tried to get to mount with knee on belly on my right side but i tried something i learned from a purple belt casey where i put my right hand backwards on his knee, kept my left elbow close to my side, bridged up and then grabbed his leg and got to my knees.  he tried to catch me in a guillotine from here but i got out and ended up inside his guard.  from there i got swept again, got passed, avoided a few armbar attempts by keeping my elbows on the ground, but eventually got gi choked right as the whistle blew.

After that round jason paired us up with someone new to roll for 5 more minutes before the end of class.  He put me with casey, the girl who showed me the knee on belly escape, who just got her purple belt and is just straight nasty.  At the brazilian jiu jitsu world championships (mundials) last year she won her blue belt division.  so basically for her weight she is one of the best female blue/purple belts in the world.  she basically just whooped my ass for about 5 straight minutes.  her leverage was so much better than the other people i rolled with.  i just couldnt really do anything if she wasnt in my guard.  after i got tapped a couple times i managed to get her in my guard and we stayed there for a while before the end of class.  im glad i have a really good guard at this stage of my bjj career but i still have to work a lot on avoiding the sweeps from top position, and regaining my guard once someone is in my side control or mount.


I stayed a little after class, took about a 15 minute rest then rolled a 7 minute round with a 3 stripe named matt who is about my size.  We started on our knees and i pulled guard cause i always just get run over in that position and people end up in side control on me.  he tried to pass for a bit but i kept repositioning my body so my legs were parallel to his body.  i managed to get him to put his hands on the mat and i went for a kimura/sweep but he defended it pretty well.  he got an arm under my leg and tried to pass but was a little slow with it and i pulled him in and got one leg over his arm, moved his arm over to the other side and finished the triangle.  that made me pretty happy as usually when i get someone in a triangle i either lose the position or i just topple them over and get into side control. 

We restarted on our knees but this time i fell into his guard.  he tried to attack with a few armbars/sweeps, but i kept my elbows in close and wouldnt let him get his legs past them.  both of us were getting pretty tired and eventually when one of his armbar attempts failed i passed to half guard.  ive spent a ton of time on the bottom here so i know what works and it wasnt long before i got to mount.  my mount submissions are just a total epic fail, so i spent about 45 seconds futily going for an arm triangle and a gi choke.  the 7 minute round ended, and if i had known it was close to being over i probably would have attempted an armbar.  i just hate going for an armbar from mount with any amount of time remaining cause i have seriously missed about 18 out of the 20 armbars from mount i have tried, but i like to try them every so often as i have been getting slowly better with them and eventually i will be a master of it.


anyway i was pretty happy with todays class.  i managed to finish a triangle, rolled about 8 and a half minutes with a good white belt and a blue belt before getting tapped and learned a few new tricks.  im not sure when ill get a chance to go in next, but probably the monday 6:00 beginner class because i have some shit to do this saturday and wont make it in. 

Sorry I havent posted in a while.  Not all that much has been going on in my life the past couple weeks.  I hurt my arm at bjj 2 sundays ago so i took last week off and just started going back to bjj on thursday.  I also havent been playing a ton of poker as ive only logged about 25k hands this month and maybe played 30-40 tournaments.  just a quick note about poker before i get into other stuff...i havent been doing all that great so far this year.  im up about 18-19k in cash games this year, even or up a few thousand in mtt and sngs (got 4th in 100r for 10k, and some other ok scores in 1ks, 200rs and ftops events to keep me slightly up), and made probably 20k in rakeback.  i mean overall i am up roughly 40k this year but for the hours i put in (probably 225 in total) i think thats not really all that good.  ive been studying my game, watching videos and reading forums a lot lately so hopefully i will see some improvement in results.

anyway what i really want to do is start a jiu jitsu diary in here because i find I forget a lot of stuff and id like to be able to look back and see what we did in depth in previous classes and reread it before each class so i can progress my knowledge much faster.  so anyway im just going to post an entry after every bjj class.  sorry for everyone out there who really doesnt care about all this stuff, but this is the best place for me to put it.



Day 1:
My judo still sucks donkey balls.  Whenever I go for an ochi gari or some other type of sweep i always end up a little off balance with one foot in the air and my opponent either has a foot sweep or a single leg or some other throw available to him.  The only throws/sweeps that seem to work for me are the single leg or sort of a sacrifice sweep where i put my foot in my opponents hip, drop to the floor, grab his other leg and kick out the same leg as the hip i have my foot on so he falls over and i can jump into his half guard.  Im going to avoid doing other ones that im the scout315 of and just concentrate on stuff im like the brad booth of for now until im a bit better at these two. 


On the ground we first went over some half guard stuff from the bottom.  I've had a lot of trouble lately when i get pinned to the floor in half guard and he gets his arms around my head.  In a tournament this gets an advantage point because its a good position and in a way i kind of lost a fight by allowing him to get his outside arm past my defense and through.  If I can keep my body off the floor and sort of keep him parallel to me rather than letting him get more perpendicular to my body i am fine.  But once i was put in this position i had a ton of trouble.  Heres a picture to give you a better idea of the positions:



The above picture is a bad position.  The guy on top has his weight spread well and is balanced so its hard to sweep or reverse him and is close to getting his right leg past his opponents legs and getting to side control.  The guy on bottom really needs to try hard to keep the guy on top from getting here by keeping his body more parallel to how you are and not allowing yourself to get flat on the floor.  Here's another picture:



So once you are in this position you arent fucked completely yet but its not good.  Pretending im the guy on bottom, what I need to do is stretch my left arm up by his head, unhook my feet and bridge my hips upward.  What this does is unbalance the guy on top and force him to stretch his left outer leg out to prevent him from getting rolled over.  However its important to note that I have to also bring the left arm in front of his face after I stretch it up because if I dont I will give him an arm triangle choke which is lights out for me.  this gives me some space to bring my right leg through and recover the guard.  If he stops that leg with his left hand then i can underhook with my left arm, grab his belt and go for the back.  Of course there are some things he can do to counter but at least there are some possibilities for me from this position.


After the half guard stuff, we worked on an armbar attack from side control position 1.  There are 7 positions of side control that you move to by switching your hips based on hip escapes your opponent tries to do.   Here is position 1:



Basically I am facing him with my right knee under his right arm (key) and my right arm tucked to his hip.  To get the armbar from here, take his extended right arm and place it in my left armpit tight.  Then i push my hips forward and swing my left leg around so its on the other side of his head but im still balanced and keeping my weight on him, making sure my chest is heavy on his arm.  i use my left arm to grab both his arms, pull my right shin up to his ribs and grab his belt or gi pants with my right leg and sit back.  So now i will have my left leg over his neck, my right leg tucked in his ribs, both his arms held by my left arm and my right arm holding him so he cant go back to the floor.  then i grab his bottom arm on the wrist with both my hands and either finish with a normal armbar like this:


or i can stay in that position, keep his wrist pointed upwards and just push it against my knee.  its a really tight armbar that forces a tap really quickly as it doesnt really give any room for trying to escape.  Now the guy on bottom has 2 things he can try to escape.  Either he can try to get his right elbow on the ground to begin with which would be great for him and really allow him to do some hip/elbow escapes to get back to half/full guard, or he can turn away from me when i get my left leg over his head.  the problem with this 2nd escape is that it kinda gives me his back and I need to lock my right hand which is under his right armpit on my left wrist which is over his shoulder.  then i pull him up so hes sitting on the floor and i have a few submissions from here.  a gi choke is the first attack and if he blocks that it sets up the rear naked choke nicely.


I will be rereading all of this before my next bjj class which will probably be on tuesday afternoon.  Hopefully this allows me to progress faster than the 5 steps forward 4 steps back method i've been taking lately.