CARDRUNNERS

grrrr. One of my stakes ended yesterday. I won't get into how bad it went, but it basically set me back to even for staking and I was up a lot from staking people. Anyway, I got what was left of the stake sent back to me on UB. I was hard pressed to find good games on stars, ftp and PP so I decided to play some UB. I forgot how bad UB players are. After basically not playing there for a month, I have learned to like the slower sites. At this point, I think UB is too fast. How crazy is that? I had to really focus to slow down and think through my hands...something I never used to do. It helped me to play well and I really cleaned house. I picked up about 6 or 7 buyins on UB and 1 or 2 on ftp and stars...great day! I think I am going to have trouble not playing at least some UB in the near future. Man do I hate paying them rake though.

Today I played for about an hour. I ran horribly and kept getting in setup situations. Luckily two of the major setups were against a guy who was stuck bad on stars and was playing very scared. One hand I had QQ vs his KK on a baby board w/ a short stack allin preflop. I managed to only lose 1k. It just didn't feel right. He didn't bet once, just called my bets and checked after me on the river. The other hand he had 33 vs my AK on a A32 board. He raised the flop and I was going to get all in on the turn, but the 3rd flush card hit and we both completely shut down. No more money went into that pot. I only lost a $600 pot. WOW.

Anyway, I lost about 2 buyins today. Oh well. It's gonna happen.

I'm heading down to Champaign (where U of I is) for the night. I havent been to campus since mid december ,so I am pretty pumped. Basically, all of my good friends are meeting up down there tonight, so it should be a big party. The bars are only age 19 to get in (Why? who knows, but I like it) so we are going to hit the bars hard.

Tomorrow my plan is to chill and play some MTTs and also record a new CR video. I just hope I'm not too hungover.

I've basically been killing the last few days. I've got my bankroll sitting around 45k. I even managed to take about a 6k hit towards the end of the day at ftp. I've been playing a really wide array of games. Here's a list of what I've played in the last few days...

4/8: HU, 6man
5/10: HU, 6man, PLO
10/20: HU, 6man, PLO

I've basically been bouncing around and finding the best games. It's been working out really well. I think I'll feel completely comfortable about my roll again when I have it at about 60k.

I've learned a ton from this downswing I had. It's so important to have confidence when you are playing. Even if you think you are playing ok, if you don't have confidence, you aren't playing your best. With poker, its essential to make sure you are playing your best as much as possible. During the month or so that I was struggling, I never really felt good about my game. That caused me to play poorly overall and to tilt more. I think the best thing you can do when you are running bad is to take a step back from the game. It wasn't until mentally I thought I wasn't going to play for a long time that my head really got cleared. That combined w/ my friend building my confidence by telling me I could crush the fringe site was really the key. When I got on there and ran well, my confidence came rushing back. In hindsight, I wish I had just stepped away from the game much sooner. I never shoudl have let myself get into the spot where I was on such a huge downswing. I also think that switching sites when you are running bad really helps change your view on the game. I got a fresh mindset when I got off UB.

I was talking to my roommate the other day about this time of the year. It really is a great time. We just had unofficial. It's finally getting warm outside (It was in the 70s the last two days). The NBA season is coming to a close. I just watched one of the best games in recent memory last night w/ the Suns vs. the Mavs in Double OT. It's just amazing to watch those teams play. I would have prefered to see the Mavs win, but you can't ask for a much better game. March Madness is starting today. I love the tournament. Unfortunately, the Illini aren't so good this year, but the tourny promises to be a really interesting one. Baseball season is starting up. While I'll be the first to admit that I think the Baseball season can drag a bit in the middle, I like the beginning and the end a lot. You also can't leave out spring break.

We have our spring break next week. This year me and about 13 other guys are going to South Padre Island, Tx. It's not the most glamorous place to go, but it's cheap and I know it will be fun. Basically, all of my good friends are going. We always have a great time together. It's kind of our last hoorah in a way too, because most of us are graduating in less than 2 months. The sleeping arangement should be interesting. We are cramming a ton of people in a room to keep it cheap. I'm not exactly sure how it will work, but I'll be sure to write about it once we get down there.

I've been pretty busy getting things done for school and CR with spring break coming up. Therefore, I haven't really played any poker. My plan was to play more this month, but I barely played more than last month. It's just really hard to carve out time with playing while I'm finishing up my last semester. Futhermore, I've been working out everyday and that takes about 2 hours a day. Those 2 hours used to go to playing poker. I'd rather be working out for now though. The summer is fast approaching. I knwo I'll be playing a lot this summer. I'm not in a huge rush to get back to grinding. Plus, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel as far as the legislation. It looks like Sen. Frank is looking to repeal it. I don't know how realistic that is. I do know that it makes me very happy that there is at least one person on in the government that cares about our rights.

I used to be a hardcore right wight religious conservative. I was Mr. Gun-Ho America. Then I went abroad and got a new perspective. I started looking at our government a lot different when I came back. I've become very disillusioned with our government. I'm not one of those people that is a one issue voter. I didn't start chaning my thoughts because of the poker ban. In a way, I understand what they are trying to do. I think online gambling is bad for our country. I just think that if they are going to allow us to gamble at all (ie. in vegas) they need to allow it online. THere are a lot of issues that make me very frustrated with the way our government is being managed. It's not that I've become liberal. I hope to god I can never call myself a liberal, because there are a ton of things the liberals do that just piss me off. At the same time, there are tons of things the republicans do that piss me off. I guess for now I might call myself a moderate. I wish our country wasn't a two party system. Kind of got on a rant there.

Crossing my fingers the Illini can pull out two wins. That'd be badass. Go Illini!