CARDRUNNERS

By No poker, I mean no 2 hour 12 tabling session.  I played a little HU during class, and I played a low limit donk session when I saw one of my friends sitting at a low stakes table.

    Overall I have been very busy.  I went to bed at 5 AM last night and woke up at 10 AM to Taylor telling me I was late for a CR low limit pro meeting.  I am personally disappointed in myself because this is the first opportunity I had to show a good example and prove my worth, and I didn't do so well.  It was probably no big deal to them, especially since they had to wake up call Brystmar as well, and we started about 25 minutes late.  The company is really lax obviously, but I feel like if we want to further our success we should start with the basics of professionalism.  We discussed great new strategies and there are some really cool things developing for CR.

  They assigned a butt load of work to everyone and we all have to get started on it right away (I love work).  The thing is for me I have finals next week then I am in Canada snowboardin/drinking heavily for a week.  So I can tell the 4 days between the end of my finals Tuesday, and the day I leave for Canada Saturday, I will be busy as hell.  Until then I am putting alot of CR work on the side burner.  I am going to develop some paperwork and stuff, but have to hold off with phone calls and casino visits until those days after finals.

Right now I am in class reviewing for our final, then I have to finish a 15 page group research paper on traffic situations in  experimental economics .  Overall I think I am going to do fine in classes and am REALLY looking forward to being done.  I am going to party hard Tuesday night, "you can come too bring your green hat!"

I wrapped up my finals this past Thursday and am now officially a college senior!  I really worked my ass off this semester in school and I think the results will show.  I don't have all my grades yet, but I got a B in my econometrics class, which is one of the hardest classes econ majors at Cornell have to take.  I am very happy with this as my major GPA hasn't been all that great to this point.  I am still planning on taking 3 more semesters, because I have 35 credits left and taking 18 and 17 credit semesters my senior year right after turning 21 doesn't sound all that fun.  Instead I am going to just take 3 light semesters so I can really enjoy myself.  This sounds like much more fun to me.

Right now I am trying to get myself back into the swing of things with poker.  I played probably about 2 hours during finals week and not much at all since spring break really.  I just didn't have much time with my focus more on school and my social life.  Unfortunately, getting back to the grind hasn't really been that easy, because I seemingly lose every session I play.  I think this is a combo of me being rusty and me being 'avatar cursed' on FTP (just kidding.....maybe).  As an aside, I did recently get my avatar on FTP.  It is pretty solid imo but the pic was taken 1.5 years ago so I don't look exactly the same, but it's better than most avatars and I'm happy with it.  Anyway, I'm not gonna whine about running bad or anything, I know in the grand scheme of things I have nothing to complain about.  Tax day made things less fun, but I'll deal with it.  I do want to make one observation though.  I have been playing a lot of 25/50 and railing some of the 300/600 and 500/1k PLO games.  I could be wrong, but from what I've seen I think the 25/50 games are often tougher right now.  Some of the regulars in the big games just make some very fundamentally flawed plays, particularly preflop.  The good regs at 25/50 are just super solid and don't do this really.  There are some worse regs at 25/50 who do, but in some lineups I really think 25/50 plays tougher.  Unfortunately I don't have the roll to be playing 300/600 at the moment, so all the evidence I have is my armchair quarterback observation.  I think it will be really interesting to see how some of the other 25/50 guys do in the big games if/when they take shots at them though.

On a brighter note, I am currently in vacation in Florida with my family for the week.  We're staying at the beach for 4 nights then heading to Disney World for 3 (shoutout to Mickey Mouse's best friend, Joe "LL2" Ward!).  It hasn't gone all smoothly - my dad separated his shoulder yesterday bodysurfing (he's pretty ok though), I made the brilliant decision to stay at the beach for three whole hours yesterday, which is not a very good idea given my naturally pale skin, and today set a record for the most rainfall Vero Beach has ever gotten.  However, I am still enjoying myself.  The beach time yesterday was very nice and relaxing.  I picked up Shadow Divers to read on the plane rides and the beach.  It is a novel about two men who discovered a German U-Boat from World War II 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey, completely against what all military records had stated.  I am only about halfway through and don't want to provide any spoilers, but it is a very fascinating read and difficult to put down once I start.  I picked it up because a few posters on 2p2 recommended it, and I am very happy I did so.  I really need to start reading more.  There's not much that beats a great book, imo.  After the beach, I went to get a massage at the resort.  Luckily my sunburn hadn't really set in yet and the massage was great.

Today, I went to see Star Trek with my dad since it was pouring out and I couldn't really go back in the sun anyway.  This movie was really impressive imo, the storyline was pretty compelling and there were some great special effects.  I hadn't really ever watched any older Star Trek stuff or sci-fi in general either.  I'm not a fan of mindless action movies, but this was something more.  Iron Man is a fair comparison, although the storyline isn't really similar or anything.  Anyway, check it out if you're remotely interested in this kinda thing.  Afterwards the whole family went to a seafood place and I had some really delicious yellowtail snapper.  I'm probably just taking it easy for the rest of the night and definitely watching game 1 of the Lakers/Nuggets series.  Since the Bulls were eliminated in their great first round series, I have jumped on the Nuggets bandwagon.  I'm a huge fan of their bench, especially the Birdman.  He just brings so much energy and I love the fact that he created his own nickname.  What a baller.  Their whole team is really fun to watch and I do think they beat the Lakers, probably in 6 games.  I don't expect them to beat the Cavs but will be rooting for it to happen.

Tomorrow my sister and I are supposed to get some surfing lessons.  That is contingent on both the weather and my sunburn cooperating though.  I'd say it's pretty unlikely that I end up going, but I sure hope I do.  I've always wanted to learn how to surf.  If worse comes to worse I will have other opportunities though.

One last thing - I recently did a podcast with Nick Wealthall of "On the Rail," the UK's most popular poker podcast that he co-hosts with CR blogger Kara Scott.  Nick is a great guy and a great interviewer and I think this turned out really well.  I've had several friends who don't listen to many podcast interviews say that they really enjoyed it, so check it out if you get a chance.  You can listen to it here.

That's all for now, good luck at the tables all!

Brian