CardRunners

 For all you Cowboys haters out there, this blog should be pretty entertaining.  For you Cowboys fans, thanks for sharing my pain.

This past Sunday was Week 17 in the NFL.  It was the most exciting regular season day of football I can remember as the playoff picture was still very foggy entering the day.  My Dallas Cowboys were coming off a disappointing loss to Baltimore but still controlled their own destiny, win against the archrival Eagles and make the playoffs.  Unfortunately, nothing went according to plan and the Boys lost 44-6.  It was brutal to stomach, and especially so for me.  I went with my family over to a family friend's house to watch the game.  The father is a diehard Eagles fan and made sure to show us his Donovan McNabb fathead before the game.  I could not believe how huge this thing was.  I came prepared though with not only a Marion Barber jersey that I bought 2 hours before the game but also one of my most prized possessions - a Cowboys helmet autographed by 30 some players from the '90s Super Bowl teams, including Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith, Deion Sanders, Leon Lett, Moose Johnston, and many more, plus coach Jimmy Johnson.  We had some great banter going back and forth before kickoff, and for the first 10 minutes of the game or so when it was still close, but after that it was just painful to watch and to deal with the taunting.  In true Eagles fan fashion, after the game was over he left the postgame show on for like an hour and a half, ugh.  The one funny thing about watching the postgame show was watching Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell offer his analysis.  For those who don't know, Gov. Rendell spends every Sunday during the football season in the studio with former Eagles players and coaches or whoever else discussing football.  He was nowhere to be seen when the Steelers won the Super Bowl a few years ago or when the Phillies won the World Series this year, but he loves his Eagles!  Quite humorous if you ask me.

Aside from the Cowboys game the NFL Sunday was pretty awesome, there were tons of good, meaningful games.  I'm no expert but maybe I'll do a playoff prediction blog in a few days when I have time to think about it some.  I'm sure looking forward to the playoffs even though my team came up short.

Poker's been going pretty poorly the last few days but I'll snap out of it.  I just haven't been playing focused, which is easy to do when I'm at my parents' house and don't have my setup, but I'll fix that.  I'm not too worried about it.  As an aside, the nosebleed action has been awesome to watch lately.  I don't really have any desire to play 500/1k PLO ever unless I have 5 million dollars set aside just for poker or sell off a bunch of my action, but it sure is fun to watch!  The disappointing thing is that games between 25/50 and 500/1k are pretty much dead, but I'm content grinding 25/50 at the moment.

Happy new year!

 ....has not gone exactly according to plan since my next update.  My first day back playing 25/50 I made 35k in some Stars PLO games in an hour.  Easy game, right?  Wrong!  Over the next few days I proceeded to lose all of that back plus about 45k more.  I certainly wasn't running well, but something didn't quite feel right.  I was lacking confidence at the tables a bit, which is certainly something new for me.  To help regain some confidence, I decided to watch a video.  I chose part 1 of Isaac and Brian T's new 2 part series, and was not disappointed.  I thought it was an outstanding video, and Brian in particular did a great job of leading the discussion.  It's amazing what watching a video can do for one's game when in a rut.  I ended up winning about 15k today, and more importantly just felt a whole lot better about my game and felt like I was in control again.  I really can't stress enough how much watching videos helps me when my game is a bit off, and I encourage you guys to do the same.  Hopefully I continue to play like I did today and start running better, although I doubt I'll play too much over the next few days.  I'll try to post some hands but since I'm on my Mac and don't have Pokertracker I don't really have anywhere to draw them from unless I pokerhand them mid-session, which I'm not really a fan of.

I don't really have much else new to talk about since my last update, so I'll just leave you with this video.  I saw it posted on 2+2 today and remembered how much it made me laugh this past summer.  The fact that it's sponsored by a Canadian whiskey company just adds comedic value.

 Hey guys.  As you have notice we have updated the blogging software, hopefully it's better now and encourages people to blog more and better, although personally as I'm typing this I have no idea what the difference is nor do I really care.  Anyway, I haven't blogged in a couple weeks so I'm just going to give a bit of a recap of that.

First I'll talk about poker.  Unfortunately, December has been a really crappy month on that front.  I went about a week without a winning session playing mostly 200/400 PLO with a bit of a 500/1k with the likes of superstars such as Gus Hansen and John Hennigan (sarcasm).  Unfortunately they managed to run really well and win a very inordinate amount of allins and I downswung pretty hard.  I ended up busting my FTP roll on about my 6th straight losing day when Gus was playing particularly bad, but also getting particularly lucky.  I don't really regret this as I felt like I was playing well, and several times during and after the session I asked my friend Phil Galfond, who was also in the games, if he thought I was playing well and he said he thought I was too.  I guess it's just an eye opener about variance in general, I basically went on a 25 buyin downswing in a few days in games where I'd estimate my winrate around 2-3ptbb, maybe even higher.  I guess I always knew it was a possibility but didn't really expect it to happen, but oh well.  Busting my FTP account wasn't the end of the world, I still had about 200k on Stars and did some transfers so I now have around 100k on each site.  I'm going to stick to grinding 25/50 NL and PLO for the moment with a splash of O8 and maybe even HORSE when the games are good at the 100/200 and 200/400 levels.  As I'm on break right now I'll have plenty of time to grind the next few weeks, and if all goes well hopefully I'll make 2 or 300k over this stretch.  I had a similar downswing last year around September, even dropping to 10/20 for a while, and navigated out of it pretty swiftly, so hopefully the same happens this time.  

One good thing about this downswing is that it's made me refocus on poker a bit, I think the last few months I was just kind of taking it for granted and autopiloting a bit, thinking that as long as I put in hours the money will come.  In the current state of online poker this is just not the case, one must work to stay on top.  And I intend to do just that.  I've watched several videos in the last few days and thought about the game a bunch, although one annoying thing is I only have my Mac Air with me over break, and although I have Windows the computer runs smoother on the Mac OS so I've been mostly putting in hands there and trying to copy/paste the HH's to windows later, and PokerTracker hasn't been importing them all that smoothly.  If anyone has any suggestions about this please let me know.

On the life front, I completed my finals on Friday the 12th and headed home this past Wednesday.  I think finals went pretty well, I put a lot of time into studying and completing all my work after returning from Ft. Lauderdale and hopefully the effort shows in my grades.  I'm shooting for around a 3.2 for the semester so hopefully I hit that goal.  I was going to fly to Chicago and go to the CR Christmas party but ended up deciding against it, so since I got home I've just been playing a bunch of poker and hanging out with friends here.  Although I'd say I'm mostly closer to my college friends at this point, I'm still really close to a few of my friends here as well and it's really nice to see them.  Also tomorrow I'm meeting up with my ex-math teacher who introduced me to poker in the first place, we still keep in touch a bit and he's a great guy so I'm looking forward to that.

Christmas is fast approaching as well.  I think I'm done with my shopping but may decide to get 1 or 2 more things (yay last minute shopping!), I think my family is going to really like the stuff I got, particularly my sister.  She goes to Ithaca College, located 10 minutes from Cornell, and plays in a cover band with Bruce (cornellxc) and another 2 friends of mine at a bar down the road from my house every Tuesday night, which is always a great time.  She's really musically talented and for Christmas I'm getting her some time in a recording studio to record some songs she's written.  She's really excited about it and that makes me feel awesome.  As for what I get, I don't really care that much, the giving feels way better, but I'm sure my family will come up with a few things that will be really neat.  I'm looking forward to it as always.

I've been fairly lazy about blogging lately, and I kind of want to change that.  I think I might try to shift the focus more to poker as I'm rebuilding my online roll a bit, though that could be tough when I don't have pokertracker running smoothly.  Hopefully I can make it happen though.  I always enjoy reading others' blogs but for some reason rarely feel like blogging myself, but I'm sure it's entertaining to some and also a good means of thinking, so I'm going to make an effort to be better at it.  We'll see I guess.

That's all I have for now.  Happy holidays everyone!

I'm in the airport right now on my way to Ft. Lauderdale to meet up with all the CR and Stox guys.  I'm really looking forward to it as I've just been swamped with schoolwork lately (and still have a bit to do there).  I really enjoyed the trip we took to Santa Barbara in February and was pleased with the video content we produced, and I expect more of the same here.  If you have any video recommendations let me know.

This past month has been my swingiest ever in poker.  I'm not exactly sure how I've fared since my play is split between two computers but I think I ended up somewhere close to even for November overall.  I've been playing a lot of 200/400 PLO and even 500/1k NL and HA when the games are good.  I think I've played a few times when I wasn't in prime shape to play though and played less than my A game as a result, which bothers me.  Last night I played some 200/400 PLO and 500/1k NL just because the games were good, even though I wasn't really in the mood to play, and my play suffered as a result.  I think the stress of schoolwork kind of makes it attractive to play because it's more fun that schoolwork, and forcing the issue is never a good idea.  I'm not going to do this anymore.  As for my game itself, I think my heads up PLO game is outstanding, but my 6max game can use a little bit of work.  The 200/400 6max games are very aggressive and I think I've been too loose in some spots.  After finals next week I really want to work on this.  I'm confident that with work I can be a solid 3-4bb/100 winner in 6max games if I game select well.

That's all for now, I'll update more later in the week.

Today is a big day in the history of our country.  Barack Obama will be the first black president in the history of the United States.  It's definitely a big step, and Mr. Obama should be a great role model for African Americans.

As for the politics side, I did vote for Mr. Obama.  My main reasons for voting for him rather than John McCain include (roughly in order of importance):

•  Barack Obama and his advisors have a better handle on economic issues than John McCain and his advisors.  Throughout the campaign Mr. McCain made it no secret that he lacked a great understanding of economics and didn't really do much to change this.  In a poll of about 150 professional economists The Economist magazine asked which candidate the economists thought would do a better job in handling economic issues.  71% chose Obama.
• Mr. Obama is a highly intelligent person and a great public speaker.  He is a great motivational figure.  While I don't doubt that all presidential candidates are very intelligent (even G.W. Bush), very few come across as strongly as Mr. Obama.  I think this is very important at a time where our country is hurting and in search of hope.  For many, Mr. Obama's presence will go a long way in this regard.
• I have lots of respect for John McCain, but I hate the way he managed his campaign.  He changed many of his views in an attempt to appeal to hardcore conservatives.  Understandable to a point, and I think it would have been interesting to see what he actually did had he been elected into office, but as a man of principle, I was very surprised to see him flip-flop so much.  His campaign was also overwhelmingly negative.  Every TV ad was about an associate of Obama's just trying to gather public sentiment against him; none actually dealt with what John McCain would do to improve the country.  That bothers me.  I didn't much like his choice of Gov. Palin for VP either but everyone knows enough about her to draw their own conclusions so I won't get into it.
• People in other countries are majorly pro-Obama.  Right now many countries have anti-American sentiment, and, fairly or unfairly, I think Mr. Obama will help to eliminate some of that and help America become a widely respected nation again.

Hey guys, sorry I didn't get to this sooner, but now I'm going to recap the 2 trips I took recently.  I went to Aruba to play the Aruba Poker Classic tourney and hang out with my poker friends (Taylor, Andrew, Joe (LL2), Brian (used2bgood), Mike (shipitthisway), and Rogo (Denny Lemieux).  Bruce (cornellxc) also made the trip with me from Cornell.  I always enjoy hanging out with this group, they're all great guys and lots of fun to hang out with.  If not for school I'd love to take more trips with them, but I can't really afford to miss any more time.  An average day in Aruba consisted of waking up around noon, going to the beach or pool around 1 and starting to drink delicious girly beach drinks and/or Bud Light, going back for a nap then to dinner around 8 or so, then watching baseball or football games at the bar and then doing some late night gambling.  I also hit the strip of clubs one night and had lots of fun, commencing with taking a swim in the ocean at 5am with a group of people I had met about 2 hours prior (and it was still warm!).  I can't stress enough how beautiful the weather was in Aruba, mid 80s and sunny during the day and 70s at night, just perfect.  Bruce also has a great story to tell about someone we met in the casino, but I'll let him do that in his upcoming blog.  (btw, his blog will definitely be an entertaining read, I recommend everyone check it out when he publishes it)

I also played the tournament, although honestly I'm not sure how great of a decision that was.  My head just wasn't really into playing live poker all day indoors when it was so beautiful out.  I also drank at the table some and just didn't take it as seriously as I should have.  I splashed around a lot and had a roller coaster of a day.  We started with 15k chips and my stack first dwindled to 4k, I won a race and doubled, then won a huge pot and ran my stack up to 30k or so, then lost a big one and was down to 15 again, then chipped up to about 20k when the following hand occured.  About an hour before the hand, a new player moved to my table 3 seats to my left.  I had a tough table featuring plenty of good TAGgy internet tourney players so a new addition was welcome.  I then realized that the guy moved there was none other than the infamous stevesbets.  If you've ever wondered what he's like in real life, it's eerily similar to what you'd think from his online persona.  He's an interesting guy for sure.  We had some fun table banter in which he basically called every big winner in the high stakes online games 'terrible', it was quite humorous.  Anyway, on to the hand, Steve (covers my ~20k) raises utg+1 to 600, I call in SB with QJdd, everyone else folds.  Flop comes Kd7x2d, I check, he bets 1k, I think about raising but decide its kind of hard to believe and just call.  Turn is an offsuit ace, I check, Steve bets 2k.  At this point I thought he had a lot of thin value betting hands in his range, and I didn't expect him to put me on a bluff on this board, so I decided to raise to 6k.  Steve snapcalled.  River was a Q and I thought for about 15 seconds and shoved for about a pot-sized bet.  Steve quickly says "so sick if you have A7" and calls in about 2 seconds, tabling K2s.  I'm not sure if he even put any thought into what my range is there, as I have very few hands I'm ever taking that line as a bluff with (although not too many for value either), but he owned me I guess.  I was pretty upset with my play afterwards just because I had a bit of a gambly image, was drinking too, and because it was stevesbets and he never folds, and I know this.  Honestly part of my reasoning was that it would be funny to bluff him in a live tournament and see him go on live monkeytilt, and another part was that if I lost I could just go to the beach.  Obviously this stuff should not be entering my thought process and I'm pretty upset that it did, but if I go back to Aruba next year I'm going to either pledge to myself to take the tourney super seriously or just not play.  I think my bluff was still okay vs anyone but Steve pretty much but against him it's a major mistake.  Oh well, live and learn.

I brought my camera to Aruba fully intending to take a bunch of pics of the beautiful island, but unfortunately that didn't happen.  I guess most guys are like me, too bad we didn't come with girls who could have taken some that I could have posted here.  Overall I had a great trip though, and I think those who didn't go just because they don't want to support UB are missing out, although I understand their point-of-view.

I was going to do a Vegas trip report too but this got kind of long, I'll do that in the next few days.  Take care.

Brian

I'm in Vegas right now with a few of my friends from school for fall break.  We're staying at the Palazzo, this hotel is so nice, would recommend to anyone.  We ate at Sushisamba last night, it's a sushi place with a South American twist and also some Brazilian and Peruvian food.  We had a bunch of cool rolls, my favorite being a tuna roll with foie gras, caviar, and gold flakes to make it look even more awesome.  Also for appetizers we got a raw bar that featured a live lobster and a few others, all were great.  We then went to the best casino in Vegas - O'Shea's!  We got a pitcher of beer for each of us and played some single deck blackjack (lol), beer pong, and $1-5 spread limit.  Bruce (cornellxc) and I crushed the blackjack game for like $800, I'm really amazed that they spread single deck, I don't really know how to count but for those who do they have to be crushing it.  The spread limit game was hilarious too, Bruce and I were capping it to 20 preflop every hand then never folding any piece postflop.  You'd think the regulars would like this because we were trying to give them money, but instead 2 or 3 people left and then the other 2 guys were bitching at us like "this isn't poker, stop it guys."  I replied, "we're trying to give you our money, is that a problem?" but unfortunately they didn't understand this argument and were just being negative, so the game kind of stopped being fun so we just left.  There was a live band there too doing cover songs that was pretty good I thought, it's a fun time and a big contrast from the rest of the strip and I'd recommend a night at O'Shea's for anyone visiting Vegas (at least under 30).  We're going to Bank at Bellagio tonight with a big group I think, should be a good time.  I'll post a trip report after I get home on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Good luck at the tables and in life.

Brian

 Hey guys.  I'm excited to stay that I'm off to Aruba tomorrow!  I'm actually not sleeping tonight and driving up to the Syracuse airport for my 7:30am flight with my friend Bruce (cornellxc), where we fly to JFK and then to Aruba.  As it so happened we're on the same flight with Taylor and Wiggins leaving from JFK, it'll be nice meeting them there although I'm sure I'll be half asleep.  Also I'm excited that I'm flying JetBlue since I never have and have heard so many good things about it.  Will post report!

In Aruba I'm playing the tournament.  I'm getting some great value because I bought my $5500 seat off a satellite qualifier for $3500.  The transaction went smoothly and to my surprise UB support was very helpful and efficient in transferring the seat, kudos to them.  Aside from the tournament I plan on lounging by the beach a lot, hanging out at the hotel bar, scuba diving, and unfortunately keeping up with my schoolwork a bit.  I can't wait to see all my friends down there, I had a blast in Vegas and I expect Aruba to be even better.

Poker's been quiet lately, I've been kind of busy with school and games haven't been great so been laying low.  I did win 40k at 300/600 O8 though today, ship it!  I've been playing O8 more and more lately as the big games have been running a lot.  I'm certainly not ready to battle in 2k/4k games yet but hopefully I'll get to that point.  It's hard because there's not really much learning content available for 6max O8 games, especially at mid-high stakes, so I've just kind of been learning by feel and experience.  If anyone here plays and beats these games, I'd love to talk hands and could help with NL or PLO hands.

Also yesterday night was fun.  My roommate is a diehard USC fan and me, him, and a few other friends watched the USC/Oregon State game.  As you college football fans out there know, the #1 Trojans got upset 21-14 in an exciting game.  To make it just that much more fun, I started playing this youtube video after every big play by the Beavers:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpSdyFgwvc (at max volume obv).  It annoyed him so much it was really funny.  Then I scrolled down and looked at the comments.  I got a good 5 minutes of laughter out of them, highly recommend checking them out!

Just got done watching the presidential debate.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to vote for Obama, and nothing today gave me any reason to change that.  Barack sounded very intelligent and objective discussing all of the issues, while McCain seemed to just be looking for ways to make Obama look bad.  Not saying McCain didn't make any good points but I thought Obama was just better.  I'll have to read up on all of the policy differences and think about them more but I'm really liking Obama right now.  Just wish he was a little more economically experienced in this time of financial crisis, but not like McCain is either.

Okay I have to pack, take care all!

Brian