CARDRUNNERS

I have been in Florida for the last couple days as we prepare for a party for Shana's Grandma.  There is a hurricane nearby that makes me a little nervous but they say its not going to hit us, although it may affect our flight home.  I really wanted to play the London and Barcelona sats today, but we are too busy here getting ready for the party.  It looks like I am going to hit 60k this month, which is pretty much double my next best month and hopefully is a precursor to the rest of my months to come.  I have definetely put in a lot of hours this month and it has encouraged me to naturally put in a lot of time without the prop bet for the next few months.  When I get back my new office desk is coming in so I am stoked to get rid of the old oak piece I have been using.  Also I decided that at least 1 day a week I will use my left hand for the mouse, and hopefully after a few weeks I will be able to use it just as well as my right.  The end goal with that will be to alternate mouse hands every month to avoid carpul tunnel (which is quite a bitch).

So far I am not too pleased with the new CR site.  I am glad they have made updates but until there are more solutions than problems I think it was too premature.  Once its completely up to date I think the new site is going to kick ass and bring CR back into the competition;  unfortunately because of the premature release CR looks and feels more sloppy than ever, which was the original problem.

I am thinking of writing an article on Utility.  Yesterday I made 6 buy ins in 20 minutes and lost 5 back mainly due to poor play.  I felt like this was much more tilting than if I had just ran poorly and made 1 buy in over 2 hours.  I want to discuss the types of days you can have and how it will affect your mindset and how to prepare yourself for those kind of feelings.  It may be a week or so before I write it, and I may switch topics.

I wrapped up my finals this past Thursday and am now officially a college senior!  I really worked my ass off this semester in school and I think the results will show.  I don't have all my grades yet, but I got a B in my econometrics class, which is one of the hardest classes econ majors at Cornell have to take.  I am very happy with this as my major GPA hasn't been all that great to this point.  I am still planning on taking 3 more semesters, because I have 35 credits left and taking 18 and 17 credit semesters my senior year right after turning 21 doesn't sound all that fun.  Instead I am going to just take 3 light semesters so I can really enjoy myself.  This sounds like much more fun to me.

Right now I am trying to get myself back into the swing of things with poker.  I played probably about 2 hours during finals week and not much at all since spring break really.  I just didn't have much time with my focus more on school and my social life.  Unfortunately, getting back to the grind hasn't really been that easy, because I seemingly lose every session I play.  I think this is a combo of me being rusty and me being 'avatar cursed' on FTP (just kidding.....maybe).  As an aside, I did recently get my avatar on FTP.  It is pretty solid imo but the pic was taken 1.5 years ago so I don't look exactly the same, but it's better than most avatars and I'm happy with it.  Anyway, I'm not gonna whine about running bad or anything, I know in the grand scheme of things I have nothing to complain about.  Tax day made things less fun, but I'll deal with it.  I do want to make one observation though.  I have been playing a lot of 25/50 and railing some of the 300/600 and 500/1k PLO games.  I could be wrong, but from what I've seen I think the 25/50 games are often tougher right now.  Some of the regulars in the big games just make some very fundamentally flawed plays, particularly preflop.  The good regs at 25/50 are just super solid and don't do this really.  There are some worse regs at 25/50 who do, but in some lineups I really think 25/50 plays tougher.  Unfortunately I don't have the roll to be playing 300/600 at the moment, so all the evidence I have is my armchair quarterback observation.  I think it will be really interesting to see how some of the other 25/50 guys do in the big games if/when they take shots at them though.

On a brighter note, I am currently in vacation in Florida with my family for the week.  We're staying at the beach for 4 nights then heading to Disney World for 3 (shoutout to Mickey Mouse's best friend, Joe "LL2" Ward!).  It hasn't gone all smoothly - my dad separated his shoulder yesterday bodysurfing (he's pretty ok though), I made the brilliant decision to stay at the beach for three whole hours yesterday, which is not a very good idea given my naturally pale skin, and today set a record for the most rainfall Vero Beach has ever gotten.  However, I am still enjoying myself.  The beach time yesterday was very nice and relaxing.  I picked up Shadow Divers to read on the plane rides and the beach.  It is a novel about two men who discovered a German U-Boat from World War II 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey, completely against what all military records had stated.  I am only about halfway through and don't want to provide any spoilers, but it is a very fascinating read and difficult to put down once I start.  I picked it up because a few posters on 2p2 recommended it, and I am very happy I did so.  I really need to start reading more.  There's not much that beats a great book, imo.  After the beach, I went to get a massage at the resort.  Luckily my sunburn hadn't really set in yet and the massage was great.

Today, I went to see Star Trek with my dad since it was pouring out and I couldn't really go back in the sun anyway.  This movie was really impressive imo, the storyline was pretty compelling and there were some great special effects.  I hadn't really ever watched any older Star Trek stuff or sci-fi in general either.  I'm not a fan of mindless action movies, but this was something more.  Iron Man is a fair comparison, although the storyline isn't really similar or anything.  Anyway, check it out if you're remotely interested in this kinda thing.  Afterwards the whole family went to a seafood place and I had some really delicious yellowtail snapper.  I'm probably just taking it easy for the rest of the night and definitely watching game 1 of the Lakers/Nuggets series.  Since the Bulls were eliminated in their great first round series, I have jumped on the Nuggets bandwagon.  I'm a huge fan of their bench, especially the Birdman.  He just brings so much energy and I love the fact that he created his own nickname.  What a baller.  Their whole team is really fun to watch and I do think they beat the Lakers, probably in 6 games.  I don't expect them to beat the Cavs but will be rooting for it to happen.

Tomorrow my sister and I are supposed to get some surfing lessons.  That is contingent on both the weather and my sunburn cooperating though.  I'd say it's pretty unlikely that I end up going, but I sure hope I do.  I've always wanted to learn how to surf.  If worse comes to worse I will have other opportunities though.

One last thing - I recently did a podcast with Nick Wealthall of "On the Rail," the UK's most popular poker podcast that he co-hosts with CR blogger Kara Scott.  Nick is a great guy and a great interviewer and I think this turned out really well.  I've had several friends who don't listen to many podcast interviews say that they really enjoyed it, so check it out if you get a chance.  You can listen to it here.

That's all for now, good luck at the tables all!

Brian

So I walked the stage almost two years ago and now I have finally finished my last class so that I can actually get my diploma.  It will still take a bit of time going through bureaucratic nonsense, so I will probably have the piece of paper in like October/November.  Right now I am in beautiful Florida enjoying scattered Thunderstorms which are preventing us (Shana's parent's grandparents cousins aunts and uncles) from taking out their yacht.  If it doesn't clear up soon we will likely be spending the day watching Angels and Demons or Terminator Salvation (both of which are on my list of things to watch).  Shana and I head home tomorrow where I plan to prepare for Vegas in a week.  My official dates for Vegas are:  June 1-10, June 18-21,  and July 3-15.  They may change a little but that's the main plan.  I plan on staying with a friend June 1-6, then couch surfing 7-10.  I ended up getting a room in a really nice house kinda last minute when someone else bailed out, just because I have been tearing up tournaments lately so my mindset changed from avoiding WSOP to taking a few risks at the WSOP.  I told alot of friends that I wasn't going to be out there that much, I wasn't trying to avoid you, I just thought at the time that staying at home and grinding cash would be better than spending a ton of money in Vegas.  Here is a virtual tour of the house:  tour.circlepix.com/tour.htm  or check out the youtube video:

Here's a list of the events I plan on playing, I may bail on some or hopefully not be able to play some because I will be in others:

June 2-10:

WSOP#8 2-7 Single Draw NL $2500
WSOP #9 NLHE 6max $1500
WSOP #11 NLHE $2000
WSOP #13 NLHE $2500
WSOP #15 NLHE $5000  (might skip for partying)
WSOP #19 NLHE 6max $2500
WSOP #20 PLH $1500
WSOP #22 NLHE shootout $1500

June 18-21

WSOP #36 NLHE $2000
WSOP #39 NLHE $1500 (this one may be tricky because we are getting bottle service the night before)
WSOP #41 NLHE Shootout $5000

July 3-15

WSOP #57 Main Event $10000 Day1A