CARDRUNNERS

Taylor approached me about doing a blog a few weeks ago and I really thought it was a great idea. I have always wanted to keep a journal of some sort, but have never gotten around to doing it. This will give me the chance to do that. I am going to write some about poker and some about my life in general. I hope that I can keep the topics interesting.

I just got back from a White Sox vs. Tigers game. I grew up in Detroit and have been a Tigers fan all my life. It's really great to see them finally having a good season, let alone a great one. Unfortunately, the Tigers blew the lead they had held all game in the 8th inning. Overall, it was a very exciting game and I had a great time. I just wish that my friends hadn't been able to rub the loss in after the game.

I have been working fulltime. I must say that it is kind of taking a toll on me. I am not used to going to bed early, so I haven't been. I have to get up at about 6am and work until about 5pm. It's a long and generally unejoyable day. Looking back, I wish I had just decided to play poker this summer. That is what I did last summer and I must say that last summer was one of the best summers of my life. Luckily, I only committed to working about 2 months, so I just gotta suck it up and get it done with. I have learned that I am pretty sure I don't want to do accounting.

Poker has not been treating me well lately. I can't really complain too much, because I haven't been losing overall. However, I have been breaking even for almost two weeks now. I have lost a few monster pots as well that really have had a big overall impact on my shortterm results. I am hoping I can turn it around sometime soon. I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to play, so I need to make the most of my time when I am playing. I have really been getting killed on FTP. It feels like that site is just out to get me. I think I might stop playing there. I don't play there much, but the amount I've lost on there in the last few weeks is pretty sickening.

On a bright note, I have staked a few good players lately. I love nothing more than staking good players. It's about the best way I can put my money to use. In the past I have made a really solid amount of money from staking players. The two players I have staked now are both great players and I expect nothing but solid wins from them.

I am going to try to blog about 4-7 times a week. I am not really sure what I will write about all the time, but I figure I can find things from my everyday life to comment on. I hope you guys enjoy reading about some of the things that I am up to at the moment. Feel free to post any feedback in the off topic section or by emailing me at awiggins@uiuc.edu. I am really new to this and I'm not exactly sure how to go about it.

Cheers,

Andrew

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.

I'm in South Padre Island, Texas now and having a great time. Basically we've been getting up at about 11am, going to the beach, drinking, coming back at like 4 or 5pm, taking a nap, eating, then going out to a club at like 10pm, coming home at 2am, continuing to party and then go to bed at 4am. It's been a blast. The weather has been perfect. I'd guess it's been around 80 everyday. We've had clear skies the entire time as well. Our sleeping arangment is a little cramped, but not too bad. Our place turned out to be really nice. We are in a condo and not a hotel room. We have a full service kitchen, sitting area w/ pull out couch and two bedrooms. We are right on the ocean and have a great view. I was honestly expecting a dump of a room, so I was very happy when I saw what we had. The only problem is that there is no maid service here and it's been getting pretty trashed.

My dumbass roommates almost got us kicked out of the resort last night. Basically they were being loud on the balcony and got the security to come up and talk to us. They claim they are strict about loud noise. I don't think it would have been too much of a problem, except earlier in the week my friends were wrestling after the bars and put a huge hole in the wall right next to the door. The security guard noticed this and wasn't too pleased. He even called in his supervisor. Basically, if we are at all loud again, I think we might be out of here. I think we can make it though. I got some pics of our view and the hole that I'll put up when I get home.

We've been playing a lot of beach volleyball. It's a great sport to play on the beach. I'm not very good, but my height does help when I'm playing the net. I'm definitely going to try to play more beach volleyball in the future.

Vanilla Ice is going to be at one of the clubs on Friday. I'm looking forward to that. Also, if you guys remember DJ scribble from shitty MTV fame about 6 years ago, he was here too. He was at a club a few nights ago and we were there. He was actually pretty good. I wasn't too crazy about him because I thought he changed songs too soon, but I won't argue he had some skills. My friends all thought he was really good. My friend and I used to rip on him all the time back when were in middle school and watched MTV. If you remember he used to always just turn the volume up and down when he was on. Anyway, it was funny seeing him here.

Ok, I'm heading down to the beach now. I've got a few more days of this and then I'm heading home on Saturday.

There was a thread today on CR about me being busto. Obviously the OP doesn't really know his facts. However, I have barely been playing lately, so I can understand why some people might think that. I want to address this so that there is no confusion. I am a teacher on this site and it's important to me that people realize I am a winning player.

I am on a downswing. I panicked and took out too much money when Party was closing. I had most of my BR on party and frankly I just had too much money online to not panic. I did fine for a few months, but keeping a small BR online finally caught up to me around the end of 2006. I hit a bad downswing and since then I haven't had a proper BR online. I have played some since then, but not much. I had been wanting to play less poker for some time. I'm in my last year of college. I've also played so much poker for the past 3 years that I was finally starting to get legitimately burned out. When I lost most of my remaining money online, I knew it was a good time to take a step back from the game. That's what I did. Since I started taking the break, I have really been enjoying life. It's nice to have fun this last semester and not worry about all the stress that revolves around poker. I always liked to claim that poker didn't affect my personal life much, but it's almost impossible for that to be true. If you are winning or losing 10K+ in a day, it's going to affect you. I like not thinking about that stuff for once. I'm also taking a lot of hours this semester so that I can graduate in time. I've normally taken about 14 hours, but this semester I have 20. Furthermore, we've been working on a lot of backend things at CR to improve the site for you guys. I have been enjoying putting more time into CR opposed to playing as of late.

With all that being said, I still love the game of poker. I will never stop playing completely. I just felt this was the best time for me to take the break I had been wanting to take. In addition, I wasn't too crazy transferring 40k+ back online with the state of the industry. I have since decided that I think it is ok and I have had 40k put back online so that I have the proper bankroll. It's just impossible to take the game seriously when you don't have the right bankroll online. This has all been an important lesson about bankroll management to me.

I honestly don't think I even need to get on here and defend myself, but at the same time, it can't hurt. I don't need people going around and saying I'm busto, because that is just utterly ridiculous. I have invested large sums of money that will never be touched, I'm making good money from CR, and I will continue to make good money playing poker. I realize that my reputation is important as a teacher at CR so that is why I am addressing this.

I will start posting my results as I get back into the 5/10 games more. I know I will be playing a lot of 5/10+ starting in May. I will try to play as much as possible in April.