CARDRUNNERS

It's heating up in Chicago, and it's about time. I'm sick and tired of the horrible Chicago winters, but hopefully it will be warm until November. I'm heating up at the tables a little bit too, which is nice, and my 5/10 grinding days are pretty much over (mixed results, tbh, will talk about it in a video or future post, eeked out <2 bb's/100 9 tabling over about 17000 hands). I am feeling really great about my game though, which is something I don't usually say. It was nice to just grind a ton of MSNL and really start to think about the game again, because I had been playing so much heads up for the past 2 years i think my 6max game was lagging. My next 5-10 6max videos will probably be of me 4 tabling, and recording the audio afterwords with pauses. I'll be able to have a bunch of reads on guys, too, which will be nice. I'll talk some more poker later, but this post will mostly about what I've been up to lately, because I haven't blogged in awhile.

Thursday Andrew, Caroline, Ezra and I went to the Cubs game. It was great weather, and we got some bleacher seats. Afterwords we went to Uberstein for a few more drinks. We got pretty damn drunk by the end of the night, and Melissa was nice enough to come by and hang out for a drink, and drive Ezra and I back to my place.

Friday, I was still tired from being hungover, work, etc., so I just stayed in and watched Scarface. I'd never seen it, so figured like a good way to kill a Friday night.

On Saturday, Cole came into town with his gf Larissa. Andrew, Cole and I went out to dinner at Aria with our girlfriends. It was a fun dinner, with some pretty good food. Cole and Larissa headed home afterwords, and Melissa and I went to meet up with my friends at English. The next morning, the 6 of us met up and Andrew's place which is 2 blocks from Wrigley. Andrew, interestingly enough, only had keystone light in his fridge, which is a questionable decision.

Cole and Larissa show up at about noon with their bags, as they are headed back home a few hours after the Cubs game. Cole walks in and I go "Cole, I hope you like keystone light." He casually replies, without missing a beat, "I hope you like Grey Goose," as he pulls out a large bottle of Grey Goose. It was the most typical Cole entrance you could imagine, and we all knew it.

Needless to say, we had a fun time drinking some keystones and vodka sprites, then headed over to the game. The Cubs pounded the Pirates, and we left in the 8th inning because it was getting very cold when the sun went down. The 6 of us headed to Goose Island, had some dinner and beers, then went to Brystmar's place to hang out for a bbq he was having. Cole and Larissa had to head straight to the airport, so we all headed home.

That's it for me, there should be a nice little update tomorrow morning for you guys!

tc

Where did the summer go?  June & July flew by much faster than expected, and I'm currently packing up my car for the rather lenghty drive back to Chicago.  I feel so fortunate to have fallen into such a great crowd of guys in the poker community, and I can't wait to do this again for another tournament series in the near future.  Traveling overseas is a big priority for me right now, so hopefully I'll see a bunch of you at the EPT/APPT/WSOP-E events in the coming year.

If all goes to plan with my driving schedule, I'll be in Denver tonight to rest, then hit up the wind tunnel there for about 30min of tunnel time before driving the rest of the way.  I finally got comfortable + stable sit-flying during my last session at the tunnel, and my goal is to further improve on this and work on all my transitions (front to sit, back to sit, and vice-versa x2).  And if I do well enough at all of that, maybe I can try learning how to fly head-down.  If you've never seen/experienced a wind tunnel before, you are really missing out: check out some of these videos on YouTube.  I'm not nearly as good as those guys, but I'm getting there!

Hopefully my timing with the drive will put me just outside of Chicago on Thursday morning so I can do a few more real skydives at Skydive Chicago.  I've been wanting to jump there since I moved to Chicago but didn't have access to a car (it's ~90min outside of the city).  SDC is supposed to be one of the best places to jump in the US, so I'm pretty excited about trying them out.

And finally, Radiohead plays at Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday, and I can't wait to see them again.  It's pretty hard for me to choose a favorite band, but on most days it'd be a tossup between them and Tool for top honors.  I've only seen Radiohead once before in 2003, and that concert still ranks among the best live shows I've ever attended.  Should be a great show...these guys don't dissapoint.  Only 1759 miles to go!

7 card stud gods.  Please bring me back to my "omg how can you run so good" state.  It was fun, I didn't mean to be cocky, it just happens.


It's pretty sick that ever since my post about how I'm a god at stud I've managed to run pretty poorly to break even or so.  There's been plenty of unreal hands and such, and I'm definitely on the bad side of variance.  However, I still manage to do ok when I play due to the unreal play I see.  People just love to try and suck out.  I've been doing more of this lately and that's part of my problem.  I also have to remember how to catch more than just a pair of Ks or whatever.  I've had a flush lose to other flushes or str. flushes (wtf?) and full houses lose as well.  Those are always rough and happen, but just sucks.

Anyway, I've managed to still run ok at other games although I don't feel 100% confident in any aspect of my game.  I think the pressure of actually having to make money until I get a real job is affecting my play.  I'm not sure.  I'm up $1,600 on the month which is very good for me.  However, I'd like to be up 3k next month or so.  I had 2 -$500 days this month, so without those I'd be much more set.  And really, with my stakes, I shouldn't have swings this bad.  I'm playing 2/4 stud and 50nl hu.  Those days are the days I decided to change it up and play 6 max after running poorly in those other games.  Then run poorly there as well.  But a nice amount in the black this month.  I still have the rest of today and tomorrow to play.  I need to get to gold star as well, then decide on what to spend my FPPs on...I have about 90k, any ideas?  I think I'm just gonna do cash bonuses right now, it's probably smartest.  I wish they had amazon gift certificates for americans, I don't get why they don't.

In other areas, I had a lot on my mind this week, and while I'd rather not discuss it publicly, the issues seem to be subsiding a bit.  It has to do with my gf...everything is fantastic, but there's something I'm trying to shake because it's not an issue at all.  But when you're told "don't think about a pink elephant" that's all you can think about.  So hopefully it goes away, which I'm sure it will.  And I decided to go watch the super bowl with her down in champaign this weekend.  With everything I was thinking of this week, I want to see her more than anything right now.  So I'm going early sunday morning.  I was originally not going to go there this weekend, but that changed.  I'm also going the following weekend, so it should be pretty fun.  We're celebrating valentine's day early because she's going on vacation with her family over v-day and her bday...it sucks a little, but no biggie, we'll just celebrate v-day before she goes and her bday when she gets back.  It gives me more time to get some things in order for her bday.  I'm still unsure on presents, but I have some pretty awesome ideas.


That's all I got for now.  I think it's time for a workout, then another poker session and then on to lucky's sandwich co. on clark tonight for this gloriousness:




It's the same primanti's bros. sandwich in pittsburgh that I've been dying to try.  Apparently the guy who owns lucky's brought it over from pittsburgh.  I saw it on man vs. food on the travel channel the other night.  That show is incredibly awesome btw.  I was a bit disappointed in the Chicago episode though.  They went to al's italian beef (a fine choice), gino's east (standard) and lucky's for the 3 sandwich challenge.  I was looking for something new/different in chicago though.  I've had italian beef, deep dish pizza and the sandwich isn't even a Chicago staple.  Oh well, I'm sure it's delish.