CARDRUNNERS

Had a good weekend. Ezra is in town now which is always good for getting CR stuff done. We headed out to Gary, IN to check out the Majestic Casino. For those of you that have never been to Gary, it is awful. It's essentially the armpit of the Midwest. The city even smells terrible.

In the past, I had only driven through Gary, so it was interesting to take a stop. Why were you in Gary? you may ask. The answer is we were checking out the Heartland Poker Tour. For whatever reason, I was a bit skeptical of the tour. Honestly, I was very impressed. They do a great job. If the tour comes in your area, check it out. Everyone is very friendly and it's just a nice change from the big 10k events I'm normally at. I didn't play the event, but I played some cash games and did pretty well. I booked a $300 win at 2/5 500 max over 2 hours. I took a $300 beat on my last hand too. Set no good.

On Saturday we went to the United Center to see the Illini play Arizona in bball. I didn't have high hopes. The Illini played well and definitely should have won the game. They found a way to lose it at the end. Chester Frazier may look like Dee Brown, but he doesn't play like him. He's worthless. Anyway, the game was a lot of fun to be at. I had gone to a Bulls game earlier in the week and the difference in atmosphere was astounding. People at the Bulls game were terrible. The building was half empty, which didn't make much sense for a Mavs game. Half of the people there were basically just yelling at the Bulls about how they suck. The Bulls need to turn it around and fast. Frankly, I don't really expect them too either. I think they're going to miss the playoff this year. I just hope that is a catalyst for change around here, but our current team really doesn't cut it.

I decided I'm going to put some more time in at 2/4nl tables. This is because I want to get a better feel for the games to make my videos as good as possible. The videos are most effective if I recognize the regulars. I played some 2/4 and 5/10 at the same time yesterday and booked a nice win. So if you see me playing 2/4nl you don't have to autoask "are you making a video?" I probably won't be.

I made 3 bets on NFL games this weekend. Two of them ended in crazy fashion and def made it worth it. It's great to have a big rush going at the end of a game. I lose Ari covering, but I picked SD to cover and Cleveland to cover. Both of those games had insane finishes for the sports betters. There was a point in both where I assumed I had lost. SD was down 14 with 8 minutes left in the 4th and they had looked horrible all game. NY kicked a field goal with 2 minutes left to get behind by 2 points to the Browns. I assumed that would screw me as the spread was 3.5. They kicked an onside kick that was returned about 15 yards by cleveland. Cleveland got a first down on 3rd and 4. Lewis should have fallen down so they could kneel it out. Instead he barrelled into the endzone and scored a TD. BOOM! CLEVELAND COVERS!  Had a few high fives after that one.

Going to vegas tomorrow. It's mostly for business, but I'll mix in some pleasure too. I'm looking forward to hitting up some blackjack tables. There are also should be a lot of CR members out there. I'm looking forward to meeting up with them. I plan on hitting up some 5/10nl as well. I've been getting more and more into live cash games lately. It should be fun to play some at the bellagio (I've never played there). After watching the Mayweather fight (awesome by the way) on saturday, I'm itching to get back to Vegas. I really love Vegas and it seems like it's been too long since I've been out there.

I'll try to get up some more frequent updates when I'm in Sin City.

Oh yea. My roommates don't read my blog, but some of my friends do. One of them told my roommate, Pat, about the Will Smith entry. Pat declared that it was bullshit that he didn't get mentioned in the blog. Pat Connor is my roommate who hates Will Smith. There ya go Pat, even though you aren't reading this.

One more thing. The CR mtt league is starting up on Tuesday. It's always a fun time to play in. Taylor, Ezra and I will all be making an appearance as will other CR pros/guest pros. If you're looking for a good way to kill some time on a Tuesday night, I highly recommend checking it out. You can get all the info on it here.

My friends and I were discussing I am Legend the other day. While I admitted it didn't look too stellar, I had the arguement that "Will Smith doesn't make bad movies." My friends laughed and asked what the hell I was talking about. For whatever reason, I had it in my mind that I really liked all of his movies. It wasn't until I pulled up IMDB that I realized 90% of his movies are complete gargabe. Let's look at a rundown of some of his movies:

The Pursuit of Happyness - Most overrated movie of 2007? I think I could make the arguement. While I thought it was well acted, it just wasn't a good movie

Hitch - no comment necessary

I, Robot - Ok, I liked that one. That was fresh in the mind when I was defending him.

Bad Boys I and II - Cool action scenes, awful movie

Legend of Bagger Vance - This stands out because I've also made the arguement that Matt Damon doesn't make bad movies. This was bad. The Good Shepherd was worse.

Men In Black - 1st was good, 2nd not so good

Wild Wild West - Worst movie I've ever seen? I might give that title to 30 Days of Night which I saw on Thanksgiving. WWW is definitely in the conversation though.

Independence Day - Badass movie. One of my favorites from the mid 90s

So there you have it. Will Smith actually makes way more shitty movies than good ones. I think he's a good example of what marketing does to your mind. The excessive marketing actually convinced me that I liked Will Smith's movies. Now I know better.

Played poker last night for about 2 hours and made 1k. I made money in November, but not a ton and I'm not really sure how much. Until yesterday, I don't think I had played since November 13th. I always say this, but I'm confident I'll get in more hands in December. It doesnt help though that I'll be travelling to vegas and also for Christmas.

ESPN is pushing the Jimmy V foundation pretty hard this week. I'm an ESPN schill so I figured I would mention it here. It's December and the christmas season is upon us. If you had a good year at the tables or even if you didn't consider giving some back to a good cause. I think this is a really worthwhile foundation.https://www.jimmyv.org/donate/donations/ - or call 1-800-4...

I haven't bet any sports since NE failed to cover the spread vs the colts. I've also found myself rooting against them since that game. Before that I had some crazy illusion that I could make a lot of money by betting them to continue to cover spreads. Niave I know. Oh well. Anyway, I heard the line on the Pack game tonight. The packers were at +7. I think it's going to be a close game, so I went ahead and bet it. It will also give me a good sweat on what would normally be a boring Thursday night. I don't like either of those teams, so I normally wouldn't care at all who won. Come to think of it, I definitley dislike the Cowboys more, but even still. It sucks for all of you out there that don't have NFL network. Directv baby!

As a side note, while spell checking this post I realized that I don't know how to spell argument. I spelled it "arguement" multiple times throughout this post. I know I'm a bad speller, but cmon, argument is a pretty easy word.

As another side note, Taylor is reading Greg Oden's blog right now and he just told me that one of Oden's three listed hobies is guitar hero. It's just a funny mental picture to think of him playing guitar hero.

Those of you that have read my blog for awhile know that I go in waves usually. I'll post a lot for a period and then fall off significantly. I really try to keep my blog fresh and interesting to read. That can be very difficult at times. Frankly, I just haven't really had anything good to write about for awhile now. I can't say today is any different, but I gotta make a post. It's been too long.

I've been working pretty hard this week at the office. I've also been putting a lot of focus into getting to the gym and eating healthy. I want to really focus on my health again. It's something I've been conscious of for awhile now, but I'm not nearly as good at working out/eating good as I was 9 months ago. I also decided to quit smoking pot for at least awhile. It seems like it was a long time coming and it's mostly for a bunch of small reasons added up. The main reason though is that I think I can do more with my life/be more productive if I just stay off the greens. Wish me luck on that one as it won't be easy.

You know how I know you're gay? You buy Alicia Keys albums. Yea, thats right. I actually used money to purchase her album the other day. The even sadder part is its the 2nd time I've bought one of her albums. The first one I can explain away though. I was at home and bored and decided to go blow some money at best buy. I bought a ton of shit including like 10 cds. They were featuring her unplugged album so I took a flier on it. It's a good cd. I've heard her new single, No One, a lot and I liked it, so I just bought her new CD. Honestly, her stuff is good, I'm just not proud to own it. In fact, I'm more embarrassed to be a fan of Alicia Keys fan than Justin Timberlake. What happened to the days when I listened to Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Grateful Dead exclusively?

The last few days, my friends and I have been arguing a lot over our NYE plans. I think we've decided to go to The Drake, but some people think it's going to be too old of a crowd. Anyone out there have any experience being at the Drake in Chicago for NYE? I think our other main option is The Hilton. It should be fun to go to a hotel this year. Gotta switch it up from year to year...

Oh yea, I don't think I've blogged about my new found obsession to Guitar Hero. I finally caved in and bought the new version. I've played the game before, but it's not easy to get addicted when you don't own it. However, if you do own it, you probably know how damn addicting it is. I've recently bridged the gap to the hard songs. I don't think I'll ever get to expert, but that's ok with me. I love the Dover song on GH3. I even went out and bought GH2 so I could have duel guitars and all the songs on that game.

First of all, I want to wish everyone out there a happy Thanksgiving.

I have an incredible amount to be thankful for in my life. It's nice to have a day like tomorrow to remind me of how good I have things and to help me try to keep everything in perspective.

Normally my family heads to Michigan (where all my family lives) on Wednesday and then head up to our Cabin to hunt through the weekend. It was always great to see family, but the downside was I would miss hanging out with all of my friends who were home from college. Since I went hunting last weekend, this year I've come up with a new plan that allows me to get the best of both worlds. My family is going to wait to go to Michigan until Thursday morning and then I'm going to just fly back to Chicago on Friday. That way I can go out on the infamous "black wednesday" that I always hear such good things about, see my family in Michigan, and then get home to spend more time with my friends who are still in college and aren't normally around. Should be a really good night tonight.

Taylor keeps putting the pressure on me to get a new car. He thinks I'm crimping the CR style by driving a neon. I was thinking about it and this might sound a little ridiculous and maybe even arrogant, but I think it's pretty funny. I could very well be the richest person out there that drives a neon. Really, what person that has any type of money still drives a fucking neon? I'm pretty set on getting a new car in the spring though, so I should be ok. I'll just have to put up with Taylor's shit until then.

I played poker yesterday for a few hours. It was pretty damn uneventful. In the end, I lost 1k. I never really played any big pots except for one where I misclicked and min raised rather than putting in a healthy raise. I priced the guy in with his flush draw and he hit to beat my AA. oh well. For some reason, my HHs from FTP weren't saving properly yesterday. Not really sure why, but it sucks to not have the HHs when you go back to look at them.

For the first time since I've owned a laptop, I decided to not take it on vacation with me. I've always wanted or needed to have my laptop with me at all times. Some of the time it was to play poker and other times it was to just stay on top of things like my email. After using my iphone so extensively during my vacation last weekend, I realized that I don't need to lug around my laptop with me anymore. The iphone works so well that I can easily use it for email and also to browse the internet. It's pretty nice to have all the functionality I need in my pocket.

Sunday morning was my last chance to get a Deer. I got into the blind at about 6:30. All was quiet until about 8:00. I was reading some articles on Espn.com on my iphone when I looked up to see 4 does standing in the middle of the field. Nice. At least I was going to see something that morning. A few minutes later another doe came onto the field. That doe and several of the other ones kept looking back to where they had come from. I figured that was a good sign as they might be looking back at an approaching Buck. That ended up being the case. A nice 6 (possibly 8) point buck stepped out onto the field. He made some fuss and scared off all the doe and had the field to himself to get some food. Nice. I hadn't shot at a deer since the mid-90s but I figured it was time to get back into it and take a deer. The only problem was this was a 300 yard shot and I forgot what buck fever was like. Buck fever is basically what they call your nerves when you see a buck. I was pretty damn nervous and facing just a monster shot. Let's just say it didn't go over too well. I missed. I even got off a couple shots, but none hit the mark. The other downside besides not getting the deer was that I wasn't wearing any ear protection. A .270 produces a pretty load blow when you shoot it. My ears were ringing off and on the rest of the day.

That's the field I was hunting. The deer was straight away at the very end.

Here is my good ole hunting getup. Solid I know.

My dad reminded me how much people that snore suck. I feel bad for women who marry guys that snore. We were pretty tight on sleeping space so I had to share a bed with my dad. He snores a lot and was obviously right next to me. It made it very difficult to sleep well. I was constantly waking up and having to hit him a few times to get him to stop.

I played a bunch of solitaire on the way home. I'm basically convinced that the Vista version of Solitaire is rigged. I've always played a lot of solitaire in my life, but never on Vista. I lost nearly every game I played. In fact, I only had a 7% win rate over nearly 40 games. The funny thing is the new rigged version shows you your stats after every game almost to rub it in your face.

Played 5/10 for about 30-40 minutes today and won about 1500. Still having a solid month, but really not getting many hands in at all. I might get some more time to play over the next few days, but I think I'll probably be too busy.

Oh yea, we have not only working heat but also a working phone in the office now. It's starting to shape up like a real office. Hell yea!

Thanks to Lou Pinella for trading me Steve Nash today in our fantasy BBall league. I have some mixed emotions about the trade because I don't really like Nash and I definitely don't like rooting for the Suns. I really needed a solid PG with assists though and Nash is the best in the game (although I'm looking for a MONSTER season from CPaul who I have in my other league). I think my team is arguably the best team in the league after the trade. Lou's team is pretty awful and is in last place by a pretty good amount. He basically needs a complete shakeup. I gave him Igoudola and Aldridge. I expect very good seasons out of both of them. Lou really needed help across the board and especially with rebounds. I think it was a pretty good trade for both of us.

Im sitting at the end of a 300 yard field basically in the middle of nowhere right now. Its probably about 30 degrees and I've been out here a couple of hours. I have like 8 layers on so I'm staying pretty warm, but my cold fingers aren't making it easy to type on my iphone. I've seen about 10 or so deer this week with two of them being bucks. One was a spike horn and the other was either a small 6 or decent 4 point that I opted to pass on. Its about 30 min from dusk right now, so I'm hoping to get some action pretty soon. Its pretty amazing that i can get internet on my phone like this. The dial up at the cabin is so slow that its not worth using. This phone internet is decent. The crazy thing is that as little as 2 or 3 years ago cell phones didnt work at all up here. Lol whole typing this i just declined a call from 000 000 0000. The only time ive had calls like that, its been from UB trying to get me back on their site. Theyve offered me some crappy deals like $100 bonus and some prwtty good deals too. I think im probably done there for good though. I like ftp a lot and its easiest to just play one site imo. I started the book The Kite Runner yesterday and finished it today. I had heard great things but I dont think it really lived up to the hype. It was a bit too depressing and also pretty unbelievable at times. It was still a decent read and it also informed me more about afghanistan and what's happened there over the past 40 years. Ive gotten up at 530 three days in a row. Its kind of nice to make the day so much longer. Its really not that bad getting up either if i drink some coffee. Im thinking im going to start getting up an hour or so earlier when iget back home. Ok, enough typing on this mini keyboard. Gonna focus and hope a monster buck stumbles into this field.

I’ll tell you what. The day seems a lot longer when you get up at 530am. I’m used to normally waking up at about 830 or 9, but today I got up at the crack of dawn. I’m headed up to our family cabin to go deer hunting. This is something that I’ve done every year in my life since I was about 9 years old. My grandpa was a huge hunter all through his life and he turned me onto it. It’s something I really enjoy and I’m glad I get the chance to do it. The nice change this year is that I’m going up for opening weekend. I’ve never been able to go this weekend because of school. It just never made sense to take off school to go hunting when I could just go hunting a week or two later during Thanksgiving break. The problem with hunting late is that the deer have generally caught on by then. It’s much easier to bust a big buck opening weekend. With that in mind, I have high hopes for the weekend. You long time readers may remember my picture of my ridiculous hunting getup last year. I’ll get you an updated version of that when I get a chance.

I actually went hunting last weekend as well. On Sunday, I went pheasant hunting with my dad and some of his friends. My dad knows a guy that has a plot of land in Essex, Illinois. It’s a great piece of land for hunting birds on. That was actually only the second time I’ve done that. It’s a great time. I’m not all that comfortable with a shotgun though and I haven’t quite perfected the moving shot. Most of my shooting throughout my life has been with a rifle in a stationary position. I would say I’m a pretty good shot with a rifle, but my shotgun skills need some work. The last time I went bird hunting I busted up 3 or 4 birds. This time around, I wasn’t so lucky. I missed a couple of close shots. I assisted on a few birds, but I didn’t have a bird that I could pinpoint as one that I took down by myself. That was a little disappointing. All in all though, it was a great trip.

I ‘m a huge Pearl Jam fan. I caught wind of Eddie Vedder having a new solo album and immediately downloaded it on iTunes. It’s a great album. It’s all acoustic and has an overall mellow feel to it. If you like Pearl Jam at all, I highly recommend it. I feel pretty lucky lately with coming across a lot of good, new music. I feel like it had been a really long time since I had bought a new album that I really liked. Come to think of it, before these past few weeks, the last album I really liked was the most recent Pearl Jam album which came out about a year and a half ago.

I had some shitty technical difficulties with my video that was supposed to go up today. I have no idea why, but it’s taking insanely long to produce. Normally, it takes about 2-3 hours for a video to produce. This one is on pace to take about 15 hours. I started it 7 hours ago and it’s about 50% done. Ridiculous. That means my video didn’t go up today. I haven’t had a video up in awhile, so I was looking forward to getting one up. Unfortunately, I ran pretty shitty in this video. The only big pot I played was when I ran my KK into AA. I think I’ll just scrap this one and make another with the hope that I get more interesting action.

I have a theory that all girls named Brooke are good looking. Every celebrity I've ever come across who has the name Brooke is hot. I've also known 3 or 4 Brookes in real life and they were all attractive. Even when I randomly come across people named Brooke, they are good looking. It's just a known fact if a girl has the name Brooke, she is hot. Not to mention, it's a sexy name. The reason this theory came into play today is because I learned that Townsend's new assistant is named Brooke. Obviously, there are a ton of comments on Brian's blog asking for pictures, etc. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you blog readers are never going to see a picture of her. I will tell you that Towny has informed me that she is an attractive girl. Interestingly enough, one of her friends knows me. I guess Brooke was telling her friend that the guy she works for makes poker videos. The friend then told her to ask Towny if he knows Andrew Wiggins. Small world, eh?

Google the image Brooke and you will see what I'm talking about. The worst looking person that comes up is Brooke Shields.

Some pics that came up when I googled Brooke:

I think you get the point.

I'm a little disappointed that I haven't been able to play poker at all this week. I've been on a good run lately, so I want to play. I've been busy though and haven't found the time to put in any hours at the tables.

I'd also like to note that I got to the bottom of Daut getting to the top of the rankings. He cheated. Well, his fans cheated. One of them, cough hookem cough, created a program that autorefreshed his blog 3 million times. Insane. The bottom line is that he cheated. Daut, I hope you can live with yourself knowing that you've cheated us all.

Long ago, I developed an affliction where I feel I need to use the snooze button in the mornings. For some reason, I feel like I'm more happy when I hit the snooze button a few times. Theres that split second where the alarm goes off and you look at the clock and think, "hell yea, I still got a few more snoozes." It's really not rational at all. When I was in high school and had to get up at like 6:30 am, I would set my clock as much as an hour early so I could snooze it a bunch of times. It gets even more ridiculous. I would even put my alarm clock across the room so I would actually have to get out of bed, hit snooze, and then run back to my bed. Insane. Nowadays, I've reduced my snoozes to about 2 times and I have my clock next to my bed. The problem now is that there is no specified time that I have to get into work, so I can hit the button extra times if I feel its necessary. I try to get into work a bit before 10am, so I don't like when I do this. It's happened twice this week. I gotta curb this stuff.

I think Sunday was pretty much the end of my short stint as a professional sports bettor. I busted my bodog account and also lost about 1k on top of that to a few people. Tom Brady and the Patriots let me down. Honestly, I'm fine with it. I basically decided I'd ride the Patriots as long as they could. I knew they would eventually not cover the spread. They finally didn't so that aura and excitement is gone. I don't like the Patriots at all, so now I'm gonna go back to not rooting for them (although I do have Brady on my fantasy team, so I probably won't actually do that). All in all, I made money in the past two months betting sports, so I gotta be happy. I always looked at it like I look at blackjack. I don't expect to win. If I do, great. It's a fun way to put a little money on the line.

Everything gives you cancer these days, right? It sure seems that way. My parents are health nuts and I've paid an increasing amount of attention to my health over the past few years. My mom emailed me t his article and I thought it was rather disturbing. The line that stuck out to me the most was this one, "Every 1.7 ounces of processed meat consumed a day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21%." I'd expect to hear that from health nuts, but from the American Cancer society? It's just a bit scary. Luckily, I don't eat much processed meat these days. Just another thing to keep in mind.

If you haven't noticed, Daut hacked into our system and increased his view numbers. Honestly, I'm not realy sure what happened. Some glitch seems to have multiplied his views by a factor of 10. I'm looking into it and I plan to be back in the 4 spot soon enough.

Poker continues to go well. I have a couple of hands I wanted to post, but they are on my other computer. In one of them I made a straight flush at 10/20nl and got paid off. I actually flopped the hand. I'll get it up here when I get a chance. I'm up about 12k in the last week. I've put in a decent amount of hands just grinding away. It's nice to have some solid profits coming my way.

I've bitched a lot about the cold in our office lately. I came across an interesting discovery today. Our office is a huge loft with a room in the front. All we ever use is the front room, so I'm never in the back. Today I got locked out and came in another door at the back of the office. I discovered that there is basically a 3x3 hole in our ceiling that essentially opens to the outside. There is a bunch of dirt and leaves underneath the hole and a bunch of very cold air blowing in. WTF? How is there a giant hole in our ceiling? They are supposed to come out tomorrow to investigate and give us an update on the heater that has yet to be fixed.

So I had a pretty laid back weekend and I ended up seeing American Gangster again. I wanted to give it another chance and also some of my roommates hadn't see it yet. I was way off on my initial reaction to the movie. The first time I saw it, I was pretty tired. I think I just let a lot of the movie go over my head because I was tired and not paying complete attention. It's actually a really great movie. I absolutely loved it the second time through. I don't know why I thought much didn't go on. There was actually a pretty good amount of action and the final scene is completely badass. It's a must see. I'm gonna say I liked it better than The Departed. Pretty much did a 180 on my view of the movie. Go see it when you can. My man.

I've been running really well in poker. I made about 10k last week playing 5/10. I mostly played full ring. I've been liking the full ring lately. It's a nice pace change. There isn't much variance. I can nit it up, watch TV, and still put together some pretty good results. The one downside is that it's very boring.

I love Sunday's. I honestly look forward to Sunday every week. As I've mentioned, I really enjoy fantasy sports. Sunday is great because I just sit around, watch the red zone channel and keep an eye on my guy's fantasy numbers. The pats vs colts game is going to be great. I have about $1k riding on that game, so I'm really hoping that the pats cover the spread.

I'll probably get in a decent amount of hands tonight too. I'll try to keep a few hands to post in my next blog.

Also, don't let Daut fool you and get a bunch of hits from his half ass posts he's made lately. Daut needs to return to the MS paint. Don't let him continue to get a lot of hits when he posts nothing!