CARDRUNNERS

testing a long post

Friday I took off from work early and came home and slept. I played poker for about an hour and won about 1 buyin. After that I ended up heading to my friend Laruen's house. She has a pool so I figured we'd go swimming, but no one wanted to swim. We just sat around and drank some beers and shot the shit. It was a pretty good time, but nothing great.

Saturday was a solid day. I woke up and headed over to my friends house to watch the US vs Italy game and cookout. The game was a dissapointment. The refs were absolutely pathetic and IMO they cost the US the game. I think we looked MUCH better than the last game though. We still have a chance. I really hope that everything can fall in place so we cna move on to the 2nd round.

After the game we went to my friend Eric's house to just hang out outside. His sister was having a party and had a volleyball net up so we ended up playing volleyball all afternoon. We cooked out some more and drank some more beers. Around dusk it started to rain and we headed inside to watch the end of the Sox games and shoot some darts. Again, nothing too crazy but a solid night.

Today was fathers day so I didn't play any of the majors. I played some 10/20 early in the day and CRUSHED. I then watched the back nine of the US Open. Wha ta crazy crazy final round. I can't believe Phil drove the ball so poorly. I relaly wanted him to win.

I playe da little 5/10 tonight and got KILLED. Overall, I was up on the day, but I gave a lot back at 5/10 and I'm pretty pissed about that.

NBA game was a SICK SICK game. Wade is unreal. I can't believe the stuff that he pulls off. I have $5 on the heat and I think I might be cashing in on that. I cna't believe they have won the last 3 games. What a great NBA playoffs.

Taylor bought 4 tickets for the Radiohead concert this tuesday. We had to pay a lot more for waiting so long to buy them, but it will be worth it. Mork and Beaumont are both coming too. I like both those guys a lot so it really should be a great time. I love radiohead and I hear they are amazing in concert. I just hope I can get off work early on tuesday.

Every summer we will go golfing with all of my friends. Most of my friends almost never play golf so it's more just hanging out then anything. We always end up drinking a lot and having a good time. Actually the first time we did it we actually got in a fight by the club house. It's the only time I've ever heard of a fight breaking out on a golf course. There were 3 guys in the group in front of us who were about 25 and hammered. For some reason (i forget) we exchanged some words on the 18th tee. I think one of my friends accidently hit into them. He apologized, but the guys were jackasses so both groups starting talking shit. Well we let them hit and they got out to their ball. My other friend, who is terrible, went ahead and hit. He hit the best shot of his life and actually hit one of their carts. They screamed at us from the fairway and we yelled back, but I assumed that was all it would come to. We finished up the last hole w/ nothing happening. As everyone was cleaning out their carts 2 of the guys from the group in front of us drove in next to my buddy and hit him with a golf club. Considering we had 3 college athletes, including a boxer, with us, that was a terrible move by them. My friends started just wailing on the 3 guys. They all had bloody faces when it was done and it turns out one had to get 12 stiches on his face. I was actually in the bathroom for most of the fight and only caught the end. I'm pretty pissed I didn't see it all. Anyway, it was dumb and I was embarrassed that happend, but it makes a good story.

Back to this year...we drank a lot, but didn't cause any trouble this time. We just had a solid good time. I played pretty well for awhile, but the wheels came off as I drank more. By about the 14th hole I started playing terrible. it's okay though, I was just playing for fun anyway.

Today I am going to play a bunch of MTTs. I am especially excited for the 1k event on stars.

I'm gonna rant a bit now so bear with me. I've been doing some thinking today (I'll to why later) and I think I've come to realize something important. I'm gonna rant a bit now so bear with me. I don't think I'm reaching my potential in life. Don't get me wrong, I've accomplish a lot and I'm really happy with what I've done, but I think I could do better. I'll start with school as an example. I do pretty decent, but I could definitely do better. It's not even that I don't spend enough time (i don't). I don't put a ton of time towards school but thats because I value having fun more than a few extra percentage points. Its that the time I do spend isn't spent well. I tend to half ass the studying I do. I feel like I could probably be 100% more efiecient if I put in my best effort. This brings me to poker. Half the time I just don't play my A game. I know I'm not playin gmy A game, but I play anyway. I should just not play when I'm not playing my best. My time would be much better spent and I would have less stress. This brings me to the reason I started thinking about this. Yesterday I tilted pretty bad and lost about 7 buyins. I lose 5+ buyins way way too much. If I could cut out those really bad sessions, I would be winning much more money. My job is the same way. I do an okay job, but I could be doing better. I am going to be there anyway, I might as well bust my ass and do the best I can. I am really going to focus on putting forth a better effort in everything I do.

I think its important to ask yourself if you are always playing your A game. Be really honest with yourself. I've been asking myself this question for awhile, but I always either convince myself that I am or ignore what I know is true. If I really want to become the player that I envision I can be, I need to really live up to the statement that I will play my A game all the time or I won' tplay at all.

Sorry for the rant. I didn't really have anything else to talk about and I wanted to get that in writing for myself.

I had a super busy week at work and I honestly had nothing to post about. One night I had some dinner w/ people from work that took all night. I just went bed when I got home. We basically just shot the shit w/ some of the guys that work for crowe. It was a pretty good time actually. One guy had spent a year in Belguim and another was a huge golfer, so I had plenty to talk about. Thursday, I played 9 holes after work. I played pretty bad, but I was just messing around w/ 2 of my friends on a pretty crappy course. I didn't keep score, but I'd guess I shot about 50.

On Friday I had people over to my house. We debated through email during work whether a keg would be a good idea or not. I always said no. I didn't think we would finish it, because none of our friends are around this summer. Well, we got one anyway. We only drank aobut half of it. Pretty pathetic. I hope I never have to dump out 1/2 of a keg ever again in my life. It's depressing. On a lighter note, one of my friends from U of I was in town fo rthe weekend. He's a really solid guy and I hadn't seen him since mid december. It was fun to hang out with him.

On saturday my friends went downtown. Since I'm not 21, I was stranded at home. I watched A history of violence. I had heard it was a great movie. It was ok, but def not great.

I haven't had much time to play poker. My loss on Tuesday was kind of the last straw for me as far as some of my bad habits that I've picked up in the past few months. I made a list of things I am going to do in order to make sure I am plyain gmy best game.
1. Follow stop loss of 3 buyins - I'm never playing my A game after I lose 3, so why keep plaing
2. Don't play more than 6 tables - I just don't play my A game when I 9 table
3. Play little or no HU - Sometimes you have to play HU because there isn't action, but otherwise I won't play and I def won't play against good players
4. Play shorter sessions - I start to lose interest after awhile. I need to only play when I am totally focused
5. Practice good table selection - this is very important at 10/20 and I've been sloppy with it lately. The new 25/50 games should help make the 10/20 games easier.

I've preached a lot of those things but I have been lazy about practicing what I preach. So far I have been doing well with them. I played on Friday and stopped when I got down 5500. Today I only played for an hour because I got bored. I think these rules will really help m ybottom line and I think w/ a good effort I can follow them. Most of these things are things I used to do but have just gotten lazy about lately.

Today is going really well so far. The woman who is giving me work this week is working from home. She has sent me a few things to do through email, but so far I've had about 15 minutes of real work. I've mostly just been surfing the net and getting some things ready for Vegas. Also, the radio station I listen to during the day is doing an artist portrait on CCR all day long, so thats sweet.

The White Sox need to get their act together. I'm not a White Sox fan, but I am a Tigers fan. I grew up in Detroit and used to go to Tigers games all the time. It's nice to finally see them winning, let alone killing. They have never been a good team as long as I have liked them. Of course I want Detroit to edge out Chicago, but I was loving the close competition. A lot of my friends are Sox fans and it was fun to argue who was better. I believe the Sox are 8.5 games behind and have lost like 12/15 or somethign crazy like that. WTF? They are a good team on paper and should be doing much much better. Of course, it's not easy to keep up with the Tigers with how they are playing right now.

Anyway, I'm going to Vegas tomorrow. I'm excited and dissapointed at the same time. I think it will be a ton of fun, but I also think that not being 21 will put a damper on the trip. It's just so ridiculous that I can't legally drink or gamble in this country. ugggggghhhh.

I don't think I will have time for any poker today because I need to pack for Vegas and I think I might take a nap after work to catch up on some sleep.

I think I'm up 1.5 buyins for the month now. VN work Andrew! Hopefully I can pull in a few more before the month is over. I'm not very good live because the game is just too slow typically. I don't know if I'll even play much live while I'm there.

Today was a roller coaster ride. I started off down one buyin right away and wasn't feeling good about the session. I decided if I dropped one more soon, I would just quit. I ended up catching a pretty good rush and got up to about +5k.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?438476

Here I made a pretty good call on the river. Pretty standard on flop. I decided to raise the turn because the board was so draw heavy and I was likely still ahead. I wanted to protect my hand and get a better idea of where exactly I stood. He called and I was pretty sure he was on a draw. I wasn't sure if it was a flush or straight draw. The river completes the flush but his bet is strange. It doesn't look like a value bet to me. He only bet 1/2 the pot. I thought about it awhile and decided that he was trying to push me off the pot without risking a lot. I called and he showed a straight draw.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?438474

Example of pushing AK allinpreflop. Sassy and I have played a lot and he has a pretty wide range there against me. Also, he only had 1600 to start the hand. I figured hed fold most of the time. Pretty standard push.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?438472

Here it starts to go bad. I've known this guy forever and played a decent amount with him. I probably should have folded the turn, but I made a bet that I hoped he would push over the top of. I think he does that with 77+. I had been pushing him around and he was ready to make a stand or so I thought. I thought QQ was pretty likely. I was wrong.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?438469

Guess I misjudged my opponent here. Sure seems like a dumb way to lose a 8k pot on my part. He instacalled the river fyi. I think I bet too fast on everystreet and that made it look like a bluff. I need to make sure I slow down 100% of the time. I thought he was calling me pretty light but was ahead and thats why I bet the river. Too bad it wasn't a 5 or 6, because he def pays me off there.

I would have prefered to get a few wins under my bealt before having to use the stoploss, but whatever, I will recover. I'm gonna play a ton next week. I will want to be ahead of my pace by next Friday. If not, I might start to worry a little bit.

I've had a sick run on party poker. I'm up around 30k in my 5 sessions or so there so I really can't complain.

Today -5689.62
Overall +575.42

4924.58 behind 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.