CARDRUNNERS

Well the announcement of Brian happened and I think it went well. This had been in the works for a long time and I'm really glad that we were finally able to go public with it. I have high expectations for the future of Cardrunners and I know that Brian will be a great addition to the site.

I've been playing some 5/10 and 10/25 the last few days. I went on a nice run and was up 10k but I gave most of it back. I guess that's just how it goes. Sooner or later I'm gonna have a huge rush. I know it'll happen, I just don't know when.

I had an interesting hand play out with my friend, David. http://www.pokerhand.org/?814665. Basically I feel like he knows my game very well so I wanted to play this hand in a strange manner to throw him off. I knew it could lead to some tough decisions, but I was ok with that. I made a standard raise preflop. I opted to check the flop to disguise my hand. I figured I could work to win a medium sized pot. I bet the turn. He's gotta figure I would have bet most pair hands on the flop so the turn shouldnt have helped me at all. He can also try to rep the 4 and get me to fold a real hand. I'm not completely confident that I am in good shape here, but the reason I checked the flop was to create some action that otherwise may not have happened. There is no way I'm folding at this point. I called and decided to see how the river played out. The river is an interesting card because it makes it so you only need a 6 to complete a straight. David bet the river pretty quickly. This got me wondering because I would consider that river a scare card. He knows that a hand like 67 or 66 could definitely be in my range here. Of course there's the chance that he has the 6 but he also probabyl would have thought the river through more. I really got the feeling that he was betting the river no matter what and he knew what he was going to bet. To me this meant he was either making a value bet with a big hand or that he had complete air. I was leaning towards him making a play. I tanked it and eventually called. I played the hand like I did to try to setup a situation where he would bluff into me. I know that I also allowed a chance for him to outdraw me, but his timing kept making me think he didn't have a monster. In the end, he had JJ. I never expected for him to have JJ there. He told me later that it was a very thin value bet. It's definitely not a good value bet because I'm usually not calling with a hand worse than JJ there.

Sunday started out as a great day. We basically combined our apartment with our friends next door to make it so a lot of people could watch the game all in our apartment. They brought over their TV stand to help make my TV up higher, their couch and some chairs. Here is the basic setup.


We got a keg and had a good amount of food for the game too. The food included Harold's Chicken, chips with various dip and little sausages among other things. Harlod's Chicken is the shit, by the way.

Of course, the game started out great with the return by Hester and we were all going crazy and feeling great. By halftime, I was already starting to get a bit worried. When they finally lost, the mood was pretty shitty. We were also getting pretty wasted by that point. This is where my day got even worse. I somehow bet my friend $50 on rock, paper, scissors. I won with ease. He wanted to play again for $500 and convinced me without much arguement. He took me down 3-1 to be a best of 5 series. I then asked for a double or nothing and he wouldn't give it to me, so we did high card for $250 twice in a row. My 4 and 7 were no good and I lost them both. Dumb gambling for no reason. My friend is a really nice guy and felt bad for taking 1k from me. He ran to the nearest convienent shop and bought me some gifts. He got a few bottles of alcohol, including Jack and Jager and these things:

Thats a half pocketknife/half lighter (that I haven't figured out how to work yet), a small pipe (that does in fact work), and an ash tray of a naked big titty jamacian woman smoking a fatty. I don't know why these things were being sold, but I like them. For those of you who know Grady, he was the generous friend in this story.


Yesterday I was feeling kind of shitty about the day before so opted to play some online poker and skip most of my classes. I got railed. I lost about 6 buyins at 5/10nl. I'm not sure why I just can't pull out the wins as consistently as I used to. It's pretty damn frustrating.

I guess Taylor is coming this weekend. Maybe I can recoup some of my gambling loses on some fifa bets vs him. I think we both think we have the edge in that game. Although, I was playing like shit last time he was in town and I've snapped out of it somewhat. It could get interesting.

I haven't been doing too much lately. Watching a lot of TV and playing a lot of video games. I guess I'm just enjoying the college lifestyle. It's been a pretty enjoyable last week, but I'm getting tired of being so lazy. I haven't really played much poker. I'm thinking I might just keep doing what I'm doing for a few more weeks and then jump back into 5/10nl. I miss the higher stakes. I'm not ready to go back to them yet though. I'm getting a better feel for the lower stakes, but I continue to run pretty bad and also make some mistakes at costly times. My game is starting to come around though.

Taylor was in town on Thursday and Friday. We got some Cardrunners stuff done, which was good. We are working on some great new additions to the site that we hope to roll out soon. It's always easier to get work done when we are together in person. That's why I am really looking forward to getting a Cardrunners office this summer. I think we can get a lot more done in less time. We also played a decent amount of Fifa when Taylor was here. My guess is that Taylor has been playing a lot in his free time. He's gotten a lot better than he was a month or so ago. I no longer dominate him. In fact, he dominated me this time around.

I got hooked on HBO's, The Wire. I had been told for quite some time that it was a great show. I love HBO shows, but I was always just a bit aprehensive about starting a new show that is in its' 4th season. It's always a pain to catch up to shows. Well, my friend bought season 1 on dvd, so I no longer had much of a choice. I fucking love the show though. It's too early to say, but I think it very well may rival the Sopranos. It's similiar in the aspect that it follow organized crime. I am really interested by organized crime. However, this show focuses on the crime that goes on in the Projects and also on the cops that are working to catch these criminals. It's very interesting and has a decent amount of action too. By the end of today, I will have finished season 1. It only took me 4 days to watch it all. I'm sure I'll go rent season 2 tomorrow.