CARDRUNNERS

I woke up today and actually felt like playing some poker. The end of the month is coming up so I need to make sure that I stick with it so that I can make sure I accomplish this goal. I basically had it in the bag if I had kept playing a lot, but I've barely been playing at all lately. Now that I'm totally settled in at school and my partying should start to decrease a bit I can get back into my normal routine.

I started off really bad today. I don't think I was playing all that great and I was running pretty bad. I was probably stuck almost 10k in the first 30 minutes. I was only planning on playing for an hour and a half so I almost just quit then. I didn't want to get stuck really bad when I knew I wouldn't want to sit here all day and grind out of it. Anyway, I decided to just keep plugging and hope to catch some cards. Luckily, I was able to do just that. I started running pretty hot and ended up winning 5k on the session.

I should note that I ended up playing more yesterday and lost about 2k back. It was all at 5/10nl. I was making a video for cardrunners and just ran awful. It's a two part series and I think it's pretty good. The first part is already posted.

Green tea does not quench thirst at all. I will have to avoid it on hungover mornings.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?473081
Here I just tried to control the pot size and make my hand deceptive. I felt like there was a good chance he'd have me in really bad shape if we played a big pot.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?473125
This hand was pretty bad.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?473166
These opponents are both crazy players. This was an easy call. I'm glad it held up.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?473221
I decided to slowplay this one and I'm sure glad I did. He tried to make a thin value bet on the river that basically got him comitted to the pot. I don't think he should bet that river.

Today: +5158.23
Overall: +74592.58

5842.58 AHEAD of pace

I went to IU last weekend and it was awesome. I'd have to say it was one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. A bunch of us from High School all met up there. The reason we chose this weekend was because my friend who plays WR for Sothern Illinois was giong to be playing in the game vs IU. He never played much before this year, but has been getting a lot of playing time this year. We were all pumped to see him in action. We tailgated starting about 11am before the 4pm game. At UofI we don't really tailgate much because we mostly just go to the bars. It was nice to do some real tailgating. We had some trouble getting into the game but eventually found some student tickets and got in. We were sitting in the IU student section. The game was a high scoring game and was close most of the time. Phil (the WR) was playing the whole game but wasn't getting any passes thrown to him. Then in the 4th quarter when the score was 21-21 he finally got a look. We could tell he was the only one open so we all started to yell anticipating the throw. The QB threw to him and he was able to get into the end zone for his first college TD. It was one of the coolest experiences I've had in a long time. We all went absolutely crazy. It didn't take long for everyone around us to starting yelling sht at us. When we finally calmed down I looked around to see that the entire section was staring at us and screaming. They wanted to get us kicked out and we had to tlak to a police officer and convince her there would be no trouble. Phil's parents were there too. It was a huge day for him and I am really glad we were all there for it. Here's a great pic of him. http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/...otball_bls108&prov=AP

Anyway, back to poker. I wasn't going to play at all until I got back home or to Aruba. Last night I was studying some adn talking to stinger on aim. We got talking about PLO strategy and I decided I felt like playing PLO. The test I was studying for should be easy anyway...I hope. I sat down at some 5/10 and 10/20 PLO on stars and FTP. I ran crazy hot. I got from 2k to 13k at one table in less than 30 min. I first doubled through with a HUGE draw vs a set and hit and then chipped up so more. The other big stack at the table decided to bluff the river of a 77xxA board. I had A7. It was an easy call. Ship the 10k pot. The 10/20 played a little tough at times but I just ran really well. The 5/10 played ridiculously soft. I left the 5/10 table with a 5500 stack. I never got it in as anything but a huge favorite at that table. I had 16k and 8k stacks at the two ftp 10/20 tables when I left. I lost about 1k on stars, but whatever. I lost a 2k pot w/ AAxx vs AAxx allin preflop and lost another tough one that I forget. In the end I won a little over 20k. That gets me out of my downswing as I am now at my peak for the year. It's nice to have such a great session. I'll probably play some more PLO in the near future, but I'll likely mostly focus on 5/10. I'm not sure I'm really ready for 10/20 and it's easy to swing down hard if I run bad.

I haven't been posting much lately. I apologize.

Aruba was a fucking blast this year. I really love that island. It has a beautiful beach and just good times all around. I wish the resort was a bit bigger with some more stuff to do, but that's about my only complaint.

The tournament didn't go as well as I'd hope. I think I was a bit distracted to be honest. Last year I was just very excited to play a live event. This year that wasn't there. I kept thinking aobut last year where I sat inside for 3 days playing poker rather than being on the beach only to win 5k. Don't get me wrong, last year was an excellent experience, but in a way I kind of regretted getting so deep. I knew I missed out on all the island had to offer. That was always in the back of my mind during this year's tournament. I wanted to try to get a stack rather than grind away. I was never able to do that though. I never got over 15k. At the dinner break I had around 11k. After dinner I didn't win a pot until I was at 6k w/ 300-600 blinds. I opted to push AJo UTG. It was a pretty standard play IMO. A guy who I called the "old timer" called me. He had been killing me all day long. I probaylb would have had 10k more at dinner if it wasnt for him. He would limp call almost every raise I made preflop and then c/r the flop or turn. It was sick. I never had a hand to raise him back with either. Anyway, he called and turned QQ. All of us laughed b/c it seemed right that he'd be the one to take me out after all our confortations. The flop came KJx and I felt like I had a chance. After a J turn adn A river I was up to about 12 or 13k. I built it up to 15k but was down to 12k when my final hand came up. The old timer raised to 2k from the cutoff and a guy who had just sat called from the small blind. I was in the BB and looked down at AQo. It seemed like a good spot to squeeze so I pushed. The old timer folded but the sb decided to call with AA. Peace out muddy. I didn't make too many mistakes I just never got cards and as I said I maybe lacked some focus.

On to the gambling act. People are freaking out over this. I see no reason to and I even think that this could possibly be a good thing for all of us. That's right, it could be a good thing. I have read most of the threads on the bill so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the situation. First off, if Frist decides this is all the legislation he wants to pursue, thats a good thing. The orignal bill was much worse. This one only makes it illegal for banks to accept transactions for gambling. It doesnt make it so you can't plya or can't promote online gambling. I find it hard to believe that banks will comply 100% with this. Next, if neteller slides under the radar I'd say that not much will change at all. Most credit cards don't work for gambling as it is anyway. It will also take away the uncertainty. We have all been wondering for a long time what is going to happen, if this is it, thats not too bad. Of course, it could possibly completely dry up the games and online poker might be all but dead a year or so from now. Only time will tell. I feel optimistic. It isn't easy to shutdown a $12 billion industry.

That being said, I'm going to try to play as much as possible this next 6 months to a year. This bill could fuck up my plans for what I do after college, but if I can put away a lot in the next year, I might be okay anyway.

I just played an hour or so long session of 5/10. I played 4 tables of 6 man and 2 tables of full ring. I was up about 2k for awhile, but I ran into some bad situations right before I quit. One of the hands I got all in pre with QQ vs KK. Not much I could do. I think I lost about $500. Oh well.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?890790
I misplayed this hand pretty bad. I think my preflop call is pretty questionable because of my postion and the fact that he is UTG. Once the flop comes I like my raise to try to isolate vs the initial raiser. When jcamby calls, I know he has a huge hand. I'm thinking two pair is the most likely. On the turn I knew the Q would kill the action so I decided to check to disguise my hadn. I should have just bet it there. When the river comes I should check with the idea of likely calling a bet. When I bet, I thought maybe a hand like A10 would call, but A10 isn't one of his most likely holdings. I just didn't really think it though. Also, if I bet there, I pretty much have to fold to a raise by him, because he's not going to bluff there. These types of hands are where my rust shows. Not putting in any significant hands for awhile can hurt you when you try to think through a hand fast.

I've had a pretty crazy week as far as going out. I went out Tues, Wed and Thurs. I'm sure I'll go out tonight. I think this has been one of the most fun weeks I've had in awhile. On wednesday night my friend decided he was going to bring $400 cash to the bar and spend it all. $400 might not be a lot of money to spend at a bar in a big city, but that is a HUGE amount to spend here. They had $1 jager bombs that night and that's all he bought. He probably bought about 350 jager bombs. I'd say there were 15 of us or so that were regularly drinking them. We got hammered. At the end I was telling him to stop because no one really wanted their 17th jagerbomb, but he wouldn't. I should note that the shots around here aren't real shots (maybe a little more than half a real shot), so we didn't really drink 20 drinks. Good times.

I've been thinking a ton about how the end is coming very soon. It's crazy that I'm about to graduate college. I've had amazing times here and I know I'm gonna miss it a lot. It has been fun though thinking back on all the great times and laughing about the stupid shit we've done over the years. It's interesting to think about how much I've changed in 4 years. Can't stop change though. It's just part of life. Gotta roll with the punches.

I've been 8 tabling 2/4 PLO on ftp and doing very well. I've made nearly 8k in the last two days there. I'm loving it. People are just handing me money on a regular basis. After the past few days I decided I'm going to focus on PLO for awhile. It's more interesting and easier to make money. I feel like at 2/4nlhe you really gotta earn your keep. People don't just hand you money like they used to in the old days. That's no good.

I got some HHs saved. I'm hoping they get pokerhand.org back up soon as I don't really like just posting the HHs directly in here.

On another note, there are crickets all over my room. I was sitting in here and playing some poker when I noticed that there were crickets all over the place near my brothers aquarium for his frogs and they were on the outside. I got up and realized that the box they were in wasn't taped completely closed and they were crawling out at a pretty quick pace. My brother and I cleaned up as much as we could, but I've already come in contact with 8 since then. Sweet.

I went out in the city the other night with Taylor, Melissa and a bunch of my friends from high school. We have gone to the city twice in the last week. Since we don't have a place to sleep down there, we have just been crashing at the Cardrunners office. We started renting it in May, but we won't be using it heavily until July. Anyway, we've termed these nights "Office Parties" and they have been really fun so far. The night with Taylor and crew I got way too drunk, but what can you do. I haven't gotten around to looking on chase.com to see what I spent, but I know it's a lot. I also managed to spend all the cash on me but like 8 $1 dollar bills when I know I was charging everything. Not so sure how that happened.

Today I'm going to play poker all day long. I've been playing some mtts lately to try to get my game ready for vegas. I was WAY off at first, but I feel like I'm starting to come around.

I've been to a ton of cubs games in the last several days. When I went to STL, I was only planning on going to the game on Friday night. It turned out that my friend had some extra tickets for the game on saturday afternoon, so I went to that game. We didn't really have anything going on later so we decided to scalp some tickets for the night game as well. All of the games were close which kept it exciting. The cubs really should have won all 3 games, but they screwed up a few times in the last game and lost it.

Being there for all those games reminded me how much I dislike the Cardinals. I've always been around a lot of the Cubs Cards rivalry and then on top of that the Cardinals dashed the Tigers WS hopes last fall. I don't like anyone on their team, especially Pujols. I also just think they have an all around bad team and that didn't deserve to win the WS last year because they didn't even deserve to be in the playoffs. The thing now is that I can talk all the trash in the world to Cards fans and all they have to say is "yea, well we won the world series last year." It's pretty frustrating. Needless to say, we got in more than a few arguments with Cards fans while we were there. It's all in good fun though.

Last night I was able to go to my first rooftop game at Wrigley. It was awesome. The view is still very good and you get unlimited food and drinks. It was nice to have a different perspective on the game. To make it even better, the game turned out to be very exciting. The cubs scored 3 in the bottom of the 9th to win 7-6. You can tell that people in Chicago are getting really excited and have high hopes for the cubs in the postseason. I'm still not convinced they will even make the playoffs and if they do, I don't see them getting far. However, I'm rooting for them because I know my neighborhood will go crazy if they are in the playoffs and that sounds good to me.

I caught the 2nd half of Animal House after I got home from the game. I hadn't watched that movie in awhile and I forgot about some of the great scenes. I love this scene.

Yesterday was a crazy day at the tables for me. I started off with things just not going well.

In this hand, I though the villian was very capable of putting a move on me on the flop. The game had been playing pretty fast and I decided to jam with my draw. I'm not really crazy about it because I think we were just too deep to be making a play like this. Not a good turn.

Not crazy about this hand either. He insta pushed over my raise so it must have been obvious I had a straight draw.

I got stuck around 5k pretty quickly. Soon after, things started to turn around. Hands like this started to happen fairly often and I got on a roll.

I even had some strange hands like this one. I'd like to claim that I made the raise on purpose. The truth is that I meant to call and misclicked the minraise. In the end it worked out great, because I got the call from the worse hand and put the guy on pretty nasty tilt.

When all was said and done I went on a 12k upswing from my low point of the day and finished up almost 7k. The month is coming together nicely. I'm running incredibly hot, but I'm playing pretty well for the most part as well.

I had a solid weekend. Friday night we went out with one of my friends I hadn't hung out with in awhile. She was the former president of her sorority and was doing an all you can drink thing with a bunch of her sorority sisters. It was like a trip back to U of I as it was all U of I people there.

Saturday was a beautiful day and we decided we wanted to get out of the house. We started off the day by hitting up an all you can eat sushi joint. It was $14 for all the sushi you wanted. There were some great rules that they insisted we read before agreeing to the all you can eat. I tried to get a picture of it, but my phone wasn't working. There were some great rules. One of them was that if you left ANY food on your plate, you would be fined $5. Another rule was that no one with ANY allergies was allowed to get the all you can eat. The reason for that being that you could not claim allergies as a reason why you couldn't finish the food on your plate. It wasn't a standard buffet though. You had to order rolls. At first it seemed you had to order at least 2 rolls at once, so we were a bit worried we might get nailed at the end. We got pretty damn full but kept ordering. Luckily, they let us order 1 roll at a time towards the end. I think 3 of us ate like 80 pieces of sushi or something crazy like that. We obeyed all the rules and ate all our food and got out of there without the $5.

After sushi my roommate made some calls and arranged a game of softball. We got 10 people so we had teams of 3, 3 and 4 and just kept everyone but the batting team in the field. It was a fucking blast. I hadn't played softball in forever and forgot how much fun it is. I'm definitely going to join a league next year. My team ended up barely losing. It was mostly due to some key errors in the field made by people on the worst team. They were out there when the team that was competing with us was batting. Oh well. I had a bunch of hits and RBIs so I did my part.

Saturday night another one of my high school friends came into the city and we did a bar crawl in Wrigleyville. We hit up a few bars that I hadn't been to, so that was cool.

Great Bears win on Sunday. Overall, I don't think they looked that good, but they pulled out the victory and that is what really matters. The season is still alive. I don't have much faith in them, but at least there is still some hope.

I came across a pretty funny youtube clip over the weekend. I love gangster movies so I thought this was hilarious.