CARDRUNNERS

My flight is leaving Sunday night. I fly out of Toronto with Achen and we're probably both playing day 1a. I'm hoping things go as well as last year. It seems like almost no one good is going, so that's a huge plus. I remember last year I was looking at the list of people who made it through to day 2 with Bugstud and laughing at how few names we recognized.

I've been pretty active the last few days. My parents recently asked me if I've been using the heart rate monitor/watch/GPS system they got me for Christmas and since it was made by Timex, I thought it was more of a joke gift. After reading the manual and stuff its actually pretty sweet, and I definitely plan on using it for all of my jogging.

In the H&F FAQ's on 2+2 I found a site which recommends programs for training for marathons/other races, and am going to more seriously pursue running a marathon. Its an 18 week program, but with poker tournaments, being lazy etc, I may turn it into a 24 week program or so. I'll be running 4 times a week, starting at 15 miles a week, running 40 miles a week during the most difficult week. I have experience running 15-20 mile weeks, but never much more than that, so we'll see how this goes. I'll also need to see whether this gets in the way of my leg workouts at the gym or vice versa.

Anyways, I used my heart rate monitor on my last run and was kind of surprised with how high my heart rate was. It was like 170 for most of the run and my resting heart rate is like 65. I once played a televised tournament with heart rate monitors and people complimented me after since my heart rate never got above something like 85, and other people were up at like 140. I guess it could just be that poker doesn't give me the same sense of excitement that it gives other people, but I was kind of surprised to see the 170 number. Maybe it has to do with the fact I haven't done a ton of jogging lately, but I definitely look forward to see how it changes over time.

Today I went and played volleyball at the University with Pacmann and some of his friends. It was sweet to play with people who are good and definitely the most fun I've had playing volleyball since high school. It is probably a combination of getting better at jumping and the fact that the setter on our team was better than any I've played with, but I played about as well as I ever have.

Pokerwise I've recovered a couple of the buyins I lost in the first 2 days of March, but bricked a couple donkaments, so it evens out. We're having people over tonight, gonna go try to clean the house up a bit.

But I'm glad this held

I was bound for a pretty mediocre session, was down about 9 buyins at one point, but finished up a litlte under 2 buyins. I'd really like to talk to someone whose played like 500k PLO hands and see how ridiculous there swings are. At this point whether I'm up or down 10 buyins, it doesn't really affect my mood very much, although perhaps if I were playing at more legitimate stakes it would.


Last night I went and played a charity poker tournament at my gym with my parents and we had an extra ticket. Rodeoblue jokingly messaged me to tell me about the tournament, and when I said I was playing he of course changed his mind and was now serious about playing it. It was actually pretty fun(people were friendly, and we got 38 hands in the first hour, no one was tanking as is usual in live poker) and the highlight was definitely the one guy at my table who makes Phil Helmuth look like a clay pigeon (bad analogy, I just couldn't think of anything else that can't dodge bullets). Anyways, hand 1:

25-25 blinds, 2k effective stacks.
He limps UTG, UTG+1 limps, UTG+2 limps, 2 more limpers, both blinds complete.
Flop: K82r (pot 175)
Checked to him, he bets 25, 5 people call
Turn: 8(pot 325)
Checked to UTG+2, he bets 50, some lady calls, UTG calls
River: 3 (pot 475)
Checked to UTG+2, he bets 50, both players call

UTG+2 tables QQ, UTG tables AA, lady tables 98o. Oh ya, it was a NL tourney in case there was any confusion

The next hand blinds go up
25-50, 1800 effective stacks
MP opens to 150, BB calls(same guy with the AA from last hand)
Flop: A74r, check check
Turn: T, donk 100, MP raises to 275, BB calls
River: 2, check, bet 400, BB considers mucking, then calls his AT and loses to 77, and he stil has 1/2 of starting stack.

I was out in like 60th/100, RodeoBlue busted shortly after, and my parents nitted their way to like 20th and 12th or so. Its kind of sad, but I think that the level of play in this tournament wasn't *that* much worse than most live majors.

Reading week( a week off of school, like Spring Break but created to limit the suicide rate) was this week in Waterloo, so I've spent most of my time just hanging out with friends. Will and I eventually ran the 12k that we originally planned to run and the conditions were pretty bad. Anytime I've gone on long jogs that are tough, its my cardio vascular system that is the limiting factor. During this run so much of it was through slush, over ice or unshoveled snow that my legs getting tired was the limitting factor. It also didn't help that as soon as soon as we started running, it started snowing and snow + sweat made my eyes feel like I was swimming in the ocean. I've also been going to the gym most days, and figured I'd post my numbers, I'll post them like once a month and see if I can make it to my goal of 225 bench, 300 squat, 400 deadlift(1 rep maxes for each) by the end of the year.

Bench: 3*5*155
Squat:  3*5*190
DL     :   1*5*290
Press : 3*5*110

I do about 5 other excercises, but those are the main ones that I want to track

Anyways, today I didn't really have anything else to do so I decided to play some tournaments. After talking to people about how tournaments have been changing, and seeing gobbo's thread about tournaments getting tougher on 2+2, I was kind of expecting people to be ok, but I was wrong. I'm talking awfully confidently for someone who only had 1 mincash, but I enjoyed playing today. I tried making a video at one point when I was deep in 2 tournaments, but instantly ran AA into AQ in one and got coolered out of the other so I scrapped it. I really expected to be pretty rusty going into today, but felt pretty happy about my play throughout the day; once I got down to a few tournaments I may have done some things that were marginally bad to increase my risk of ruin, but thats pretty standard on a Sunday.

I guess I'll try to play one or two more sessions in the next few weeks and make a video if anything goes well; there are a lot of decent tournaments that seem to have been added to the Sunday schedule in the last several months, hopefully they run on weekdays too.

Hey, I got back to Waterloo a few days ago and think I've just about corrected my sleep schedule. Since getting back I haven't done anything too exciting, I've actually played like 10k hands of poker in the last few days, but a lot of them were $0.01/$0.02.

Mihai and I decided we were going to try for the 25,000,000,000 hand. I figured I could 24 table 1/2 6max profitably, but I was definitely wrong, but after constant timing out, decided I should stick to something more in my comfort level, and dropped to the 1 cent 2 cent.  We each played 24 tables for what felt like no time at all, and when I checked my stats after the 25b hand, I had played like 4500 hands; I guess thats how people get supernova elite.

Neither of us got it,  but at least I made a few buyins at each game.

I've also played a decent number of PLO hands, and yesterday watched a few PLO videos for the first time in a while. I guess they were no good since I was up over 5 buyins at one point, and finished down about 11 buyins :P.

Yesterday Will and I went for our first run in a couple months. We decided to run about 12k, and I was thinking it would be pretty tough since we are both a little out of shape as far as running goes. The path we went down was a pretty poor choice since there was about 1.5 kilometers of snow that was like a foot deep, and about .5 kilometers of ice that was impossible to run on. The run was fine and I was quite surpised with how easy it was. I get back and see I was only gone like 42 minutes, and sigh. I double check the route, and we took  a wrong turn and only ran 8k. I'll try running the 12k at some point this week. I've also played volleyball and gone to the gym since getting back, and I forgot how sweet it is to never have to wait for anything in the gym(my gym is all old people on elipticals or cable machines). A bunch of people I've talked to complain about now keeping good enough records of their workouts, and I've been pretty lazy, so I'll probably start posting my workouts in my blog so I have something to look back at.

Thats all I really have to say for now

A ton of people I knew threw poker commented on my facebook "25 things" note, so I figured I'll post it here(clearly just posting this because of #21), I minimized the poker content but I never really put much poker content in my blog.

1)Was once provincial shot put champion

2)Was cut from the volleyball team in grade 9 after playing competitively for 2 years

3)Lost a stuffed duck called "duck" when I was 4-5, and routinely looked for it until I moved to university

4)Once missed an final exam because I mistook what time it started at

5)Mihai and I once stole a bike to gamble(we never intended to keep it)

6)Learnt how to design websites to allow me to hack people in an online game I played in grade 6

7)This one kinda sucked, so I removed it, but refuse to replace it

8)Never skipped a class before university, once ran into my CS 125(I think) prof at a poker table and didn't recognize her, not because I am bad at recognizing faces, but because I had never seen her before.

9)Got 2 calls home from school one day in grade 6; the first asking me if I want to skip a grade, the second telling my parents I got in a fight with a girl

10)My favorite part about playing chess is stalling when the other guy didn't hit his clock

11)Feared dogs after a dog barking made me fall off my bike as a kid.

12) Got over this fear of dogs for years until my friends dog bit me, I am still afraid of dogs.

13) Paid off my parents mortgage when I was 16

14) On my grade 3 report card, my teacher said I need to stop making inappropriate noises in class

15) I have dreams about procrastinating too much in school several times a week

16) I once flipped a coin and it landed on its side

17) I wasn't allowed to watch Garfield until I was like... actually I'm probably still not allowed to watch Garfield

18) When I was a kid, my parents put me in competitive swimming because I couldn't float

19) I was nearly malpracticed on when I got my appendix removed

20) I may give off the illusion of being smart to anyone who thinks arithmetic and math are equivalent

21) I care far too much about numerical feedback. When the site my blog (http://blogs.cardrunners.com/Timex) is kept at stopped keeping track of how many views it got, I stopped updating. After the system was fixed, I started updating again.

22) I feel extremely anxious when I get stuck walking behind anyone who walks slower than I do

23) Mihai and I lost a high school euchre tournament despite knowing ~exactly what cards each other held and some slight deck-rigging when other people were playing straight-up, I'm not as good at this game as I like to think.

24) When playing Pokemon red/blue, I was a little bit scared of missingno and once found the 7th gym leader in the water while doing the missingno trick, and refused to play the game until my younger sister defeated him for me

25) I've always felt uncomfortable whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, in highschool I couldn't stand it because even I knew my music was shit, but now that I like the music I listen to, I still don't like being asked.

Yesterday we left for Adelaide for 4 days, its only like a 70 minute flight from Melbourne, and none of us were too excited about the city. The flight left at 4:25 and although we didn't arrive at the airport until 3:57, by the time our flight took off, I already was paying for Watts's flight, hotel and owed him $2800, let the degeneracy begin.

We played a bunch of "Lodden Thinks" , a game where people ask one person to estimate something, chinese auction it off, and bet on the outcome.
For example, say I was playing with 4 friends for $20 a question, and they asked me how many cardrunners members there are, I come up with an answer but don't tell anyone. One person says like "I'll take the high on 100", then the next person can either say high on something higher than 101, or low on 100, bidding may go something like "high on 500" , "high on 2000", "high on 3000", "high on 5000", "high on 7000", "low on 7000", now the person who said high on 7000 wins if there are 7001 or more members, the person who said under wins if there are 7000 or less members, and everyone else in the game picks sides at this point. Say the other 2 people both took the high, and my guess was 8000, then the person who took the low owes each of the 3 people $20, if I estimated 5000 people, then the person who took the low would win $20 from each of the 3 people who took the high. Its most fun to play this with someone dumb to get interesting answers and leave more opportunities for soul reads(Sorel once played this game, and their dealer estimated the oldest living person to be 500).

The most fun round where I got made fun of by all the Aussies was guessing how many kangaroos are in Australia. I figured just about every animal is endangered, so I guessed 75,000. The opening big was 500,000, then a million, then everyone tanked every decision and I had so much trouble not laughing as people were unsure whether to take the high or the low on 8 million. It turns out the population is 50-60 million, I suck at life.

Anyways, I got to Adelaide without the bulging wallet I left and checked into my hotel. Its pretty nice, and like $200 a night for me and Watts. I then went over to Bond/Stevo's hotel, and its like $250 a night for 4 of them, is about 6 times as large as ours, has 2 stories with a balcony on each story, and a balcony on the upstairs balcony(no typo).

I got to bed and slept ok, went to the gym, woke up and played the event here. It was like 100k for first, only a 2k buyin so nothing too exciting.

It was going really well, had made some ok calls and ok folds, and was up to like 25k(20k starting) during the second level, then one hand came up that I'm not even sure why I'm posting here because I'm sure I'll get berated endlessly.

The table has no one who will ever 3bet, people have been overflatting queens and whatnot, and I have a pretty good read on how villain plays(hes like 60,hes kind of a feel player, quite call-stationy, but usually makes his hand strength semi-obvious by how he plays it), anyways, villain opens to 500 UTG, I call 8s7s UTG+2

Flop: T95 rainbow, check, I bet 800, he calls
Turn: K, check check
River: J, he bets 700, I fold

I was talking to Watts earlier in the day about how when playing live poker all those spots where you're like "sigh, he has me beat, but I can't fold this" can be folded. Anyways, I muck, and am still unsure about it.

Other than that, nothing too exciting happened, I just had the second best hand a bunch and busted during level 5.

I had one question and if anyone has a good/funny answer, post a comment here so I can limit the amount of awkwardness. Its pretty frequent that people at my tables ask me something like "are you one of those online superstars" or "are you a big name online guy" or something. I think that almost no one who doesn't know who I am in real life knows who timex is online(since I basically don't play big tournies or big cash on stars etc, and 90% of my online hands came before I played as timex), and awkwardness always ensues whether I say "yes" and then get beaten down by someone who asks how I can be a superstar and not play nosebleeds/be ranked on p5s, or say no, and then have someone accuse me of being a liar. These sound like extreme responses, but I couldn't make this stuff up. Usually I get asked something like this at least once or twice a tournament, and now I just shrug awkwardly, so if anyone has a good answer to this question, I wouldn't mind hearing it.

While its -22(-8 farenheit) back in Waterloo, its been 45(113 farenheit) here in Melbourne for the last couple days. Monday was an Australian holiday so we went to the beach and I got fairly sunburnt. I finished Red Mars a while ago, and read Super System at some point during this trip. A few blog entries ago I talked about how almost all poker players believe in magic to some extent. This book is a pretty perfect example, and there were dozens, maybe hundreds of things mentioned in this book that no one could possibly justify. The example that people talk about the most is "playing your rushes", he goes on to say that while mathematical players, and statisticians don't believe in playing your rushes, he knows from experience that you should play your rushes, and he makes more money than them. Kudos Doyle.

I then read another Richard Feynman book, "The Meaning of It All" which talked primarily about relating science to non-scientific aspects of society, and when I get back will probably read a bunch more of his books once I get back. Most recently, I started "Winner Takes All" a book about the boom of Las Vegas and how Steve
Wynn and other casino owners have transformed Vegas into what it is now. Although its been interesting and not bad overall, I kind of feel like whoever wrote the book was a bit like a well researched NVGer- an outsider looking in. I've talked with my friends about this a bit, how there are different levels of understanding for various areas.

In poker, there are the people who know what poker is, but are surprised that you can plan online for real money. There are people who know how online poker works, but heard that some sites are crooked, and that money was stolen from them. There are the people who read all the internet forums, and gossip and have a pretty good idea
of whats going on in the poker world, the people who are more involved, see things happen and wait for the thread to appear in NVG, and then the Durr/Ivey/Helmuth/Patrik's etc who know that anything they do may end up on the internet. I think for other "communities" like poker its pretty similar in that 99% of people have no idea whats going on and are within the first 2 groups of people, a large number have access to the real information second hand, a decent number of people get it the info first hand, and a few people are really involved.

I'd guess other communities like government, military, sports, organized crime, work very similarly, and I'm not saying to enjoy a book on Las Vegas it has to be written by Steve Wynn himself, I just kind of feel like this book was written by someone whose basically an NVG-tard whose decided that they like Durr, hate Ivey, have a mancrush on Antonius, so they're going to write a book about nosebleed poker.

Anyways, reading and watching Californication is more or less what I've done during the hottest couple days Melbourne has seen in over a century.

I guess I'll include one other story that I hope you guys will appreciate. A couple days ago I went to dinner with this girl I had met at the beach(long story, but it wasn't a date) and she was asking a bunch of questions about playing poker, and the question came up as to whether I'm good at "reading people". I may have mentioned a couple months ago how I was paying some attention to pick-up artist stuff, and although I guess it has made me a little less awkward and a little more confident, I tend never to use any of the gimmicky routines, but figured now would be as good of a time as any. The vast majority of the time you ask someone to pick a number from 1-4, they choose 3, and any time you ask them to pick a number from 1-10, they choose 7. I'm like "I'm pretty sure I can read you" and ask her to pick a number from 1-10, give a staredown and say 7, she was far more shocked than I would have ever guessed, and instantly accepted that I was a great poker player.

So far people I've asked are 2/2 at picking 7; actually 2/3 if you count my sister who owned me by choosing 4/4 followed by 4/10, I'd guess that if you surveyed a million girls, or a million non-poker players, choosing 4 for each would be the least likely occurance.

Yesterday was the last day of the heat wave, and it resulted in Watts and I getting into a daylong heads-up chinese poker grudge match. We never swung over 100 points despite playing 2v2 and with royalties, and in the end we finished even. I thought Watts was a bigger chinese fish than he actually is, but I was stuck and played this primarily because I thought it was good value at first, primarily to get unstuck later... from now on if I play chinese as a way of making money I'm going to need to find people who play worse or play for more $/point.  Reading over this blog entry, its really jumbled and not really about anything, but I haven't really done anything the last few days so its kind of understandable. Also, I need to learn more transition words, months ago someone told me they won't read my blog any more because I start too many paragraphs with "anyways", and now reading over my blog, not much has changed.

I read over Raptor's 5 years ago today, 4 years ago today etc, and am kind of tempted to do the same, at some point I'll probably do that with my blog.