CARDRUNNERS

Fantasy Fanatics is a site that Taylor and I have invested in. It's basically a fantasy sports version of pocketfives. It's run/owned by some of the guys who are involved with pocketfives.com. I think they did a great job building a community at pocketfives and I'm hoping the same will happen here.

Fantasy sports are a ton of fun. If you've never tried them out and you like sports at all, I highly recommend trying it. I just recently started getting into fantasy sports pretty heavy and it's become one of my favorite ways to pass the time. It also helps you get a much better understanding for whatever sport you are involved in.

I haven't really put in that many hours this month so far, but I'm beating gambler. He's on like an 18k downswing at 5/10 or something insane like that. I busted him a few times yesterday so that helped.

I didn't ever find my phone or camera. I did manage to run up a nearly $150 tab at a $30 all you can drink event on Saturday. I was trying to get one of my friends drunk who never comes out and also just get drunk after losing my phone. I did a decent job at both as far as I'm concerned. Oh, also the thing we were at was a breast cancer fundraiser so I bought 20 raffle tickets and managed to win some sick cubs tickets for the cubs/cardinals came coming up in two weeks. I'm pretty fucking pumped about that. The seats are 10 rows behind the cubs dugout. So life isn't too bad. I gotta go buy a new iPhone. I was debating over whether I would get another one or not and then I remember that I signed a 2 year contract and therefore I don't have a choice.

Yesterday went completely wrong.

We wanted to go to the cubs/mets game but didn't have any tickets so we decided we would try to scalp some tickets. We didn't have any luck. They were asking $125/ticket across the board and we weren't interested in paying that much. We decided we would have a beer or two and try again after the game started. We ended up paying $40 for standing room only tickets that have a $12 face value. It was better than not getting in though. We ended up standing right by a beer stand, so we got pretty drunk. It was a good time. The cubs won but I didn't really care. I was with both a die hard cubs and a mets fan so either way I could give one of them shit.

One of our roommates who has been subleasing is moving out after this weekend so she decided to have some of her friends over last night. She bought a bunch of liquor and also made some good food. It wasn't exactly what I needed after drinking all day. Basically, the last thing I remember is doing a shot of tequila at like 11pm. The next thing I know I wake up and my pants pockets are empty. No iphone, no camera, no wallet. Shit, not good. At this point, I'm assuming I got robbed. How else do I lose something from every pocket in my pants. I ended up finding my wallet. THe only reason I have that is because I was so drunk that I never took it out of the shorts I wore to the cubs game. The phone and the camera are still yet to be found. The thing is that the phone is still ringing and going to voicemail. That leads me to believe that it's somewhere in the house. However, I've pretty much looked everywhere and the camera is gone too. Why would both fo them be gone? I was too drunk to even take off my pants before I went to bed so I have a hard time believing that I would put the phone and the camera somewhere that I can't remember at this point. That leads me to believe I was robbed. At the same time, I wasn't gone from my house very long because I'd assume as soon as I got to the bar I realized I didn't have my wallet and I had to come home. Who knows though. Not to mention that my ipod nano was in one of those ipod players and it vibrated off and broke. Expensive night.

Gambler and I decided to make another bet this month. The bet is whoever makes the most money wins and the loser has to buy the winner $500 worth of liquor. I wouldn't mind having my apartment decked out in a bunch of top shelf liquor. So far I'm up like $2500 and I think gambler is up $10K or so. I've barely played and I think I'm playing well so I should be fine. We'll have to see how it goes. I'll keep my blog updated with the progress.

Tonight I'm drinking away my sorrows of breaking/losing $1300 worth of electronics. Wish me luck.

This is a post I was going to make the other day, but I never got around to it.

On Sunday, Thomas (Brystmar) was planning on coming into the office to make his video for monday. I had some things to get done for Cardrunners, so I headed over to the office at about 2pm. As soon as I walked in, it smelled like shit. We hadn't worked on Friday and we had left stuff with food in it sitting out from Thursday. There were flies all over the food and mold was building up on some of it. Awesome. I was thinking, "Thomas is gonna come in, see this weird oversized office and it's gonna smell like shit, great." I grabbed a trash bag and proceeded to clean everything up. There was also another giant trash bag sitting in the kitchen area full of beer cans from a previous office party that I wanted to get rid of as well. I had never taken the trash out here, but I figured it couldnt be too hard.

When I had first walked into the office, I emptied out my pockets. I like to leave my phone on my desk so that it gets the best reception and my key chain is big and can be uncomfortable in my pocket. That was a big mistake. I lugged the trash downstairs and headed out the back. I was leaving the doors open behind me as I went. The problem was the last door that went to the actual outside closes on its own. At the time I didn't even think about having my keys, but as soon as I heard that door click behind me, I started to panic. I immediately dropped the trash bags and started to check my pockets. Not only did I not have my keys, but I also didn't have my phone. Now, normally this wouldn't be a problem, because Taylor lives a block away and there are other ways I could have gotten back into the place (there are two restaurants below us that all share the same common area in the back). The problem today was that as far as I knew, Taylor was at home in Schaumburg and all the restaurants were closed. To makes things worse, I had no way to call Taylor or Thomas. I was pretty worried I wouldn't be able to get in and then Thomas would show up and I'd have to send him home (I knew he was taking the L train to the office and that can be a pain and time consuming).

I headed over to Taylor's place and buzzed the door. He usually instabuzzes me in. I know his roommates aren't around all that much, so I didn't really expect them to be there either. I started cussing to myself about how fucking stupid I am. Then about 2 minutes later I see Taylor appear at the door. Thank god. As I walked in and explained the situation, he said, "good thing you got here when you did, I'm leaving in 5 minutes."

So in the end, it all worked out, but I sure felt like a dumbass.

Thomas and I shot the shit for awhile and he made a video. The internet was a bit shotty that day, but he still got it done. Thomas is a really good guy and he makes excellent videos. If you haven't yet, I suggest checking out some of the brystmar videos.

The daily swings I've had playing PLO are laughable. You know, it's the same story over and over with me when it comes to poker lately and especially PLO. I run good and run up my money. I feel good about winning and want to play more. I start playing more, too much in fact, start playing too loose and then start to lose. Then when I'm losing I want to play more to get unstuck. It's a nasty cycle and I usually end up about even or down for extend periods. It's really only when I focus on grinding that I do well. That's what I did in Vegas and it really paid off. The thing is that it's not exciting. I like the gambling, even if I'm losing big at times. I think part of this mindset comes from losing respect for money over the past few years and in particular the last year. I'm gonna take a bit of a step back and focus on grinding 5/10nl again. The PLO always sucks me back because I see such bad play. However, I play terrible myself enough of the time that it probably negates the fact that there are miserable players.

The Tigers fucking suck lately. I'm fairly upset they didn't make a move yesterday to improve their bullpen. The Red Sox def improved their team with the pickup of Gagne. They are going to be a tough team to beat in the playoffs. I gotta give Atlanta a ton of credit too. I'm hoping they go on a tear. A lot of my friends are Cubs fan and one of my best friends is a Mets fan. I kind of root against those teams because of that. The one upside to the cubs going to the playoffs is that it would be pretty sweet to live right by wrigley if they get to playoffs/do well in them.

Sorry for the long and infrequent posts.

I've been playing the PLO games on UB for two reasons mostly. First and more importantly, the games are crazy soft. I had someone get allin for a 600bb pot today w/ top two no draw vs. my middle set + nut flush draw (that was 6200 pot at 5/10nl). Just unreal. The other reason is that when I know I don't have a lot of time to commit to playing I tend to like to gamble more. PLO is a great gambling mans game, especially on UB. I love the rush I get when I play 10/25PLO. I honestly don't get that classic poker rush much anymore, but 10/25 PLO will do it for me. You generally aren't ever really far ahead and there is a lot of money being splashed around...its a good time.

The one downside to those games is that they have crazy swings. I've played two 40-60 minute sessions today. The first one I was up 5k, but quit down 7k. I lost 10k to one guy in the matter of about 20 hands. I had a stack of 7500 and he had 2500. He bad beated me for a 5k pot and then two hands later I got in with a big combo draw (probably not my best play, but it's very easy to play too fast in that game). I lost the pot and like that he had 10k and I had to reload back to 2500. He got me one more time w/ my middle set vs his straight flush draw. eek. I came back after lunch a meeting and just fleeced a guy one two tables for the tune of 17k (it wasn't all from him, but most of it was). Therefore, I went from down 7k to up 10k.

I don't have quite a big enough roll online right now for these stakes, but I'm getting there. I don't mind stepping down if I take a hit of 15k or so. For now, I'm gonna continue to take shots at the 10/25 games on UB and hope for the best.

I watched the first episode of nip/tuck. So far, I'm not crazy about it. It was interesting ,but I think it was a little over the top. Also, and I'm probably gonna sound like a pussy here, but I think it's a little too graphic. Some of the surgery scenes were very graphic and I didn't really like watching them. I'm gonna watch a few more episodes before I decide to stop watching it though. People say it's good, so I'll give it a chance.

Tonight I'm going to the Tigers vs Sox game. I'm a Tigers fan, so I always make sure I get out to at least one game a season when the Sox come. It's always a good time. Tigers lost both games of a doubleheader yesterday, which was pretty bad. The Sox just aren't a good ball team right now, especially when you compare them to the Tigers. I don't think the Sox have much of a chance tonight pitching Contreras against Rogers.

Taylor and I had a productive day today. I figured we would be a lot more productive when we finally got into the office, but now I know for sure. People have asked me why we need an office. My main answer has always been that I really need to get out of the house. I have no desire to sit in my apartment all day. I'm glad to realize for sure that it's going to increase my productivity tenfold with regards to Cardrunners.

I really haven't played much poker lately. I think I've put in two sessions since a few days before the main event. I'm down a few buyins at 5/10 over that time period. I plan on getting back into the grind pretty soon.

I managed to get my credit card declined on Friday night and had to borrow $40 to cover the remainder of my bar tab that I couldn't cover with the cash I had on me. What happened was the $200 I sent to my checking got reversed for some reason and I ended up waking up to -$150 in my checking. Pretty solid stuff. I also woke up to see that my 1k was no longer tied up and sitting in my savings. I sent over a few smaller transfers and pumped up my checking. When I went out on saturday I ran up my largest nonvegas bar tab in awhile. I basically said since I wasn't broke anymore I was going to buy a lot of shots. It made for a pretty fun night. I can tell that wrigleyville is going to be great. I think I'm going to hit up my first cubs game since I moved to chicago on friday. I believe they are playing the diamondbacks, but I'm not even completely sure.

If sportscenter doesn't stop playing this "who's now" bullshit, I'm going to break something. I'm really tired of wanting to see sports clips and having to listen to that garbage.

I finished watching Heroes two days ago. I really loved the first season and I'm excited for the second season. With it being summertime and not much to watch on tv, I suggest checking that out if you haven't

I bought a tempurpedic mattress for my apartment. It is amazing. I've always been one to toss and turn a lot at night. While I'm not going ot claim that I haven't been tossing and turning at all, I'm can definitely say I've been sleeping better. I'd say it's the best purchase I've made in awhile.

Tomorrow I'm going to fix a flat tire on my car, buy a bunch of shit in the suburbs(save money), play some golf with my dad on his birthday and hopefully get back to Chicago by the end of the night. I'm hoping I can fit my TV in my car as well. I've been getting shit from my roommates for not getting the TV to our place yet. I'll be honest, I want to get it there really bad myself.

Well, I'm finally living in Chicago. I've only been here about 24 hours, but I already love it. Our place is really close to Wrigley and I love that. I've always loved Wrigley and the area around it. It's so cool that I actually live here now. I went to lunch today and there was a day game so I saw a ton of people going to the game and got to eat at one of the places right outside the stadium. I loved it.

I don't have any furniture in my room yet besides a mattress. After hearing a lot of good things about it, I decided to get a tempurpedic. I'm laying on it now as I type this and I can tell I'm going to like it. I always tend to toss and turn a lot when I sleep, so I'm hoping this will help me out there. Not to mention, I've slept on some really shitty mattresses over the past 4 years in college. First semester senior year I didn't even bother buying a egg carton pad for the bed and I basically was sleeping on a rock of a mattress. It wasn't until I went home and slept on a normal mattress that I realized how bad mine was.

One of my friends from high school is turning 21 tonight. Her party is at a bar that is just a short walk from here. It's gonna be awesome to go out in Chicago and be able to walk to the bars. When we all lived at home in the suburbs it was always a huge production to come drink in the city. It was a lot of fun and a nice change, so we did it a lot. I'm looking forward to dropping all the hassle involved.

My main priority over the next week is getting everything rolling with Cardrunners. I want to finish getting everything setup in the office and get into a normal routine of getting their at an early time - my plan is to get in by 930 or 10 on average).

Now onto the busto talk. I am legitimately busto right now. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before or not, but Taylor and I haven't withdrawn any money from the Cardrunners account in over a year. When brian came on and we wanted to distribute money, we ran into some issues because our accounting wasn't up to par. We've spent the last few months working on fixing everything. Needless to say, it was impossible to take out the money without it being completely right, so it's been a waiting game. We should have it done either today or on monday so I'll be okay. However, I just looked in my bank account and I literally have almost no money. My checking had $0.00 and my savings had $1200. I tried to transfer 1k to checking but it got tied up for some reason and now is a pending transaction. Luckily it let me send $200 over to checking, but that's all I got for now. I might have to borrow some money, which is pretty funny. I'm sure my roommates will get a kick out of that. If youre wondering why I don't have money in my account, here is why - investments, taxes (god they are brutal), and vegas (pretty big expenses there).



Looking forward to being rich again in a few days.

I made it 13 1/2 hours on day 1, but that wasn't enough to get through the day. Honestly, I'm not happy at all with my play. There were times where I had serious trouble focusing. I wasn't in the mood to play poker that day, I was tired, and they just make you play for so long. I typically don't play for more than a few hours when I play online. Normally, I can get by live, but for whatever reason, I just wasn't there on that day. I wish I was, because there were a few hands I definitely could have played better.

The first major mistake I made was when I cold called KK preflop and then got it all in on a J10x two diamond flop for a 50k pot w/ 200/400 blinds. The pot was against mindwise who wasn't getting out of line at all. In hindsight, I really can't see him getting it in there with any hand that KK beats. I kind of knew that at the time, but I just wasn't focusing and decided to go with the hand. Of course, he had JJ. I spiked a K on the turn and mindwise was out. I felt bad about it, because he is a nice guy and it was a sick beat to take (the guy next to me told me he folded KQ).

After dinner I seemed to refocus and was feeling better. I was pounding redbulls and that was definitely helping me focus and stay awake. I built my stack up and going into the final level (400/800 100 ante) I had 75k in chips. Any time I can have 100bbs in a tourny, I'm feeling good. I won the first two pots of the level and had about 80k. I wouldn't win another pot for the rest of my tournament. I kept getting marginal hands in position that I had to play (ie Q10 in the cutoff). The problem was that Danny Alaei was playing almost every pot and had a big stack. He was also two to my left. That means when I missed the flops, which I did every time I raised from that point on, he would stick around and try to take the pot from me. I was hoping to find a good spot and win a decent pot from him but it never happened. I bled down to about 50k in chips. I was still feeling ok, but I was starting to get a bit frustrated. Then two hands happened in a row that really got me steaming. I raised 99 in early position and a guy with about 20k in chips came over the top of me. I opted to lay down the hand but wasn't happy. The very next hand was the hand that really crippled me. I raised AKo utg. Everyone folded to the blind who just called. The flop came A82 with a flush draw. He checked and I bet about 2/3 of the pot. He called. The turn was then an 8. This is where I really messed up the hand. I should have checked behind. My thinking was that I wanted to keep betting so that I could stack him if his hand was AJ or something of that nature. I bet out about 5k and he moved in for 20k. After betting, I don't think there was anyway I could get away from the hand. I called and he showed me 78. Ugh. After losing that pot I was down to about 27k. I was still in okay shape. I got ground down by the blinds until I was at about 21k. Danny raised in early position and I was in the blinds. Danny was raising a ton of hands from every position. I looked down at my hand and had AK. I was finally happy. Then I looked up and saw the dealer was trying to talk to me. I took off my headphones and he asked me if I had the Kd. I said no I don't. He then said, well do you have a face card, because it was exposed. I had the Ks and had to give it back to the dealer. I wasn't happy. Unfortunately, the next card he gave me was a Queen. I say unfortunately, because had it been a small card, I wouldn't have busted here. Anyway, I now have AQo w/ Danny raising and it folding to me. I decided to just push and try to pick up the pot there. He instacalled and showed me AA. The flop came Axxx but there were 3 clubs going into the river and I had the Qc. The river came Qd and I was out. Lovely how I get two pair there and lose to trips.

I think next year I need to adjust my trip so that the main event isn't the very last thing I do in vegas. I had been in vegas for 40 days and I was just burned out on everything. I just wasn't in the right place to play a 14 hour day of poker. It's too bad, because I feel like I'm really playing great in general. I just didn't have it in my to do it that day. I also feel bad because I traded some %s. I know that the guys I traded with were playing better than me, so in a way I let them down.

I'm back in Chicago now and feel really good about being home. It was raining when I landed which was an interesting sight for someone that hasn't seen it rain in 40 days. Also, it was probably only about 80 degrees due to the weather. It's been so hot in vegas that it was nice to have some cooler weather.

I'm going to start moving into my apartment in Chicago tomorrow, which is another thing I'm really pumped about. I'm also going to start regularly going to the Cardrunners office to get Cardrunners work done. I've been looking forward to that for a long time. I've always felt that I wasn't giving enough time to Cardrunners and now I know that I will be able to. We are going to get a lot done in the 2nd half of the year. I'm really excited for everything thats going to be going on with Cardrunners in the near future.

Vegas was amazing. I couldn't have imagined a better time. I know in a few weeks I'll be missing it and itching to make my next trip out there. I just need to come home a bit sooner next year.