CARDRUNNERS

I am pretty frustrated all around right now. I had a pretty bad day. It was a terrible day at work. I got stuck priting out documents, 3 hole punching them and then putting them in binders for the 2nd day in a row. I have realized I really hate the 8-5 grind in a cubicle. I don't think I can do it. After work I went out and played golf. It was my first time out this year. I really enjoyed just being out, but I SUCK. I used to be around a 5 handicap or so in high school. Today I lost at least one ball a hole until I got to the 8th hole. I did par 8 and 9, so that was nice. It's just very frustrating playing so poorly when I used to be good. It's hard to enjoy golf to its full extent when I suck. I think I might go get a lesson tomorrow. My dad has one scheduled and he said I could use his time slot. My dad is about a 6 handicap. We used to have great matches. I miss those.

Poker continued to be very hard for me. I am just not running well at all. I didn't lose much at all today (about 1 buyin), but it sure felt like a lot. I lost a pot that was 3.5. buyins on stars where I had nut flush vs two pair all in on turn. About 10 min before that my top set, which was nuts, lost allin for 2 buyin pot on UB. GUy had overpair that hit a higher set. Normally I don't let these beats get to me, but I've just had so many for about two weeks now that I am getting no where. I gotta wonder when it's going to end. Oh yea, I bubbled Aruba too. At least that bubble was due to a dumb play at the end. I pushed 62s utg 4 handed. It just felt right for some reason. I had about 10k w/ 800 blinds so i had some breathing room. The BB had K2, which, of course, was an insta call. GG muddy. I think I might take a few days off. I didn't play yesterday, but that didn't do much good. At end of session I had to quit because I started to get really tilted. It's just a buildup and that's not good. I think if I keep playing I will be staring a huge loss day in the face. Maybe I will just play some PP 5/10. I haven't played that in awhile and its very low stress.

I watched a few episodes of The Office today. That show is great. If you haven't checked it out, I really think you should. I think Steve Carrell sp? is one of the funniest guys out there today. The casting is really great in that show.

Well it's almost 1am and I have to be up at 6am. Sweet.

Cheers,

Andrew

Besides my minor accident, yesterday was a solid day. Work wasn't too bad. I had some stuff to do, so that kept me busy. After work I went to lifetime to workout. I decided that I was going to get a personal trainer. I really want to take working out seriously this time around. First of all, I don't really know what I am doing. Second, having a trainer will motivate me. It is def a bit expensive, but I figure it is a good way to spend some of my hard earned money. I decided not to lift until I start my program with him so I just ran two miles. It always feels good to get back into running. 2 miles is about as much as I can do right now, but I plan on getting it up to 3 miles and then just running 3 miles about 4 or 5 times a week. I think that should be a pretty solid routine.

When I got home it was already pretty late and I decided to just play some mtts and relax. I had the League tourny coming up and there was the UB 100 and UB aruba satellite. I played really loose in the League tourny. I got a big stack early but lost a few coin flips and then ran top two into bottom set. NH Jac. The other two tournaments went a little better. I cruised along in the ub 100. I actually missed the first round because I was on the alternate list. When I sat down my first five hands were A10 (flopped two pair), QQ, KK, AA, AQ. I won every hand and was up to 9k in 5 min. It was smooth sailing from there on out. I ended up busting w/ 66 vs A10 at the final table. The guy w/ A10 made a terrible call in a pretty big pot. What can ya do... The aruba wasn't as smooth sailing. I had an ok stack most of the time, but I didn't get a big stack until there were about 14 left. I had about 6k in chips w/ 150-300 blinds and raised it to 825 w/ J10d. The flop came 8d9dx. The guy that called me pre had called me the hand before and I was pretty sure he'd bet if I checked to him. I checked and he bet pot. I instamoved in and he folded. About two hands later I got a free look in the BB w/ 56. The flop came 1066 and I bet out like 1/3 of the pot. I got two callers including the guy who just bluffed me a few hands earlier. The turn was a 6. I bet out about 1/2 of pot and the guy hit the bet pot button. I moved in and his 6s full of 10s was no match for my quads. I was now up to over 20k and the chip leader. When we started the final I think I was at about 25k. It didn't take long for my good luck to continue. I got dealt AA and raised. I got a reraiser and a guy pushing over the top of that. I called. One had QQ and the other had KK. My AA held and I was up to about 38k. About 5 hands later i got dealt KK and raised. I got reraised and pushed all in. The guy showed QQ, but flopped a set and won a 17k pot. Ugh. I proceeded to play poorly for about the next 30 min and bluffed my stack down to 18k. At that point I knew I had to settle down. I did for awhile. When it got 4 handed I started to raise a lot. My stack was growing from the raising, but it was clear I was starting to get out of line. I then picked up KK after raising 5 pots in a row. One of the other guys had QQ. My KK held and I was in great shape again. 3 handed Sheets gave me a ton of trouble. Everytime I had a hand, he folded, and when I didnt he raised me all in. I was not liking my chances. Thankfully I lucked out again and picked up AA to sheets KK. He raised the button to 4k and I pushed for 30k. AA held and I was up to 60k. Sheets whet out a few hands later when I raised the button, he pushed the sb and the bb called. It was sheets 88 vs his AQ. I was very very glad to see a Q river. I knew I'd have a much greater chance against the no nam ethan sheets. Going into HU I had a 2:1 lead and was feeling great about my chances. About 3 hands in the guy pots from the button and I called w/ K9. The flop was 109x and I checked. THe guy bet pot and I didn't think he had anything so I raised allin. He instacalled w/ AQ. I thought to myself, I'm finally gonna win an aruba seat here. That though quickly vanished as an A came on turn. UGH. I was now down to about 30k to his 90k. A few hands later he min raised the button and I pushed w/ AQ. He had KK. BRICK, BRICK, BRICK, BRICK, AAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEE. One of the prettiest rivers I've ever seen. I proceeded ot really grind him down HU. I played a lot of small pots and just outplayed him. The final hand came when he was down to 20k and the blinds were 800-1600. I pushed A9s on the button and he called w/ KK. The flop was A98xx and I won my first aruba trip. SWEET.

I think today I will play for an hour or two after work and then watch some HBO and then the NBA game. I'm hoping the heat can pull out a victory tonight. I have a $5 bet with one of my good friends that the heat will win.

Andrew

Yesterday we got up and packed up all our things so that we could head to Detroit. When we were getting ready to leave, I noticed both my wallet and my sunglasses were missing. I was 99% sure I had left my wallet on a desk in the main room. I was convinced someone had moved it and I was pretty angry that it was gone. We spent a lot of time looking for it and it never turned up. Same thing with my glasses. Well, I ended up finding my wallet today in the front pocket of a pair of pants I had worn the other day. I had actually checked those pants twice, but only looked in the back pocket. I never put my wallet in the front pocket. I'm not really sure what it was doing in there, but I sure felt like a jackass for thinking it was someone elses fault. The glasses never turned up. I really don't know how those dissapeared. I guess I'll have to go buy a new pair next week.

We all met at my uncle's house for my grandpa's 80th birthday party. Literally everyone from my family was there, including people who skipped July 4th, so that was cool. My brother and I dominated the family in Boche ball. Boche's a pretty sweet game that is always a good time.

My cousins and I went to see Superman at night. It's a pretty good movie. It's defnitely worth seeing. I think it probably was a little too long.

I'm watching the world cup now and then we are going to head back to Chicago. It's about a five hour drive. I've made the trip so many times that five hours really doesn't phase me at all. I'll probably sleep most of hte way anyway. My dad always insists that he drives the whole way...I'm not complaining. My hope is that I will have enough time ot play about an hour or two when I get home. It would be nice to get a session in since it's been so long since I've played.

I'm not a huge fan of either of the teams in the World Cup, but I'm not a fan of France at all. Therefore, I'm gonna root for Italy.

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.

I was reading Taylor's blog and noticed he used the word fleeced. I've been using that word forever and lately I've seen some others using it. Nice work guys, it's a good word.

Unfortunately, i got fleeced yesterday. I guess the bubble on UB was going to burst sooner or later. However, a big part of this was my fault. I was crushing UB since I got back on and was up about 10 buyins or so in 2 or 3 sessions. Yesterday I gave back about 3. The thing is that I was playing HU. I had told myself I was going to play limited HU and only against players I knew I had an edge on. Well I came across a player I've done really well against and decided to play him. I ran really really bad and dropped 3 buyins to him. I played another joker on another table and dropped 2 buyins to him. Luckily I was winning pretty decently on my other tables, but still. I am officially done with HU play. The variance is too high. I don't want variance. Variance is bad.

I always get down on my poker game when I have a bad session like that. I also had a dicussion with stinger last night about a hand posted on 2p2. I disagreed w/ the posts on 2p2, even though they were made by BLds and some other solid players. Stinger convinced me they were right and that made me feel even worse about my poker game. I was over looking some basic concepts.

I'm having a pretty terrible month to follow up my great month last month. I'm actually down 1 (10/20) buyin for the month. My biggest dent was losing 20 5/10 buyins w/ my stake. I had always had great luck staking people. This guy (i wont mention his name) is a very solid player who had fallen on some tough luck lately so I decided to try to make some money. It basically couldn't have gone any worse. I'm quite positive he is a winner at that level, but I'm not sure his head is in the right place. Oh yea, losing 7 buyins my first session of the month doesnt help either.

Good news: 42 days until im 21 and 7 days left of my internship.

I played basically all day long. I was stuck very bad at one point. I dropped 6k pretty much right away today and didn't play for awhile. I came back and dropped more than 6k more. I talked some strategy w/ EM2 and was feeling a comeback. I took another break for dinner and came back again. BoostedJ was sitting and asked me if I wanted to splsh around. I did. We did some serious splashing. We had a 8500 pot on a Q45 board where we got all in on the flop. I had K10 for a flush draw and he had 67 for a straight draw. We also had a 6k pot allin pre where I had AK and he had 38. Pretty crazy siht. Splashing around like that made me realize I have been playing too nitty in that game. I think it was a very important thing for me to realize. I had been having a lot of trouble getting paid off until tihs most recent session. Anyway, things went well and I ended the day up about 3k.

I really need to start my days off better.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?453883
I lost the min here. Guy told me he had 1010. He's a solid player so I knew he wasn't messing around.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?453945
Am I retarded. Why I bet the turn is beyond me. Nice hand EM2.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?454162
This is a really strange hand. I was fairly worried about KK especially since he min bet the flop. I was prepared to pay it off though.

Note: yesterday I did my math wrong and I was actually $300 ahead of pace.

Today: +3041.06
Overall: +36366.53

616.53 AHEAD of pace

On Friday, my three roommates and I hoped in the car and headed to Madison for the weekend. I went to Madison for halloween my freshman year and I decided I'd like to go there one last time before college is over. For those of you that don't know, Halloween is a pretty big deal at Madison. Basically everyone on campus dresses up, so it's always a good time. Nothing better than wearing a costume and acting like a retard while drinking a ton of alcohol. Two of my roommates and myself were Ghostbusters. We wanted our other ghostbuster to be the black ghostbuster, but he didn't want to do that at first. When he finally decided he wanted to be him, it was too late to get a costume. Friday night wasn't too crazy, because we waited to long to go out. By the time we left for the bars, the lines had already gotten too huge to wait in. We went to some gradute student bar and drank there for awhile. Everyone was older and noone else was in a costume. We headed back and had afterhours for a few hours. It was a fun night, but the next night was a lot better. We started drinking and playing bags at about 3pm, mostly because we had nothing else to do. We drank all afternoon and then headed to the bars at about 930. The bar happened to serve the strongest mixed drinks I've ever had at a bar. We got really shitty over the next few hours. When the bar closed we headed out to state street and hung out with thousands of people who were all wearing costumes. There were a ton of cops and cops on horses. It was good shit. When we got back to my friends house some of the guys with us decided to drive the grocery cart they had stolen earlier down the front stairs. That was a pretty ridiculous idea. Everyone that did it was hurting pretty bad the next day. All in all, it was a sweet weekend.

As far as poker, I haven't been playing. On sunday, I had to make a video. I played a short session earlier in the day to get warmed up for the video. I didn't want to make a video after not playing for a week. I did alright and won about $700. I was never feeling like playing much though. The video went alright and after running pretty bad I broke even. It's kind of hard for me to make PLO videos. I'm still learning that game and sometimes its hard to express in words why I'm making the play I'm making. Also, I'm not sure I'm always making the right plays. For now I just don't feel like playing at all. My guess is my break will last into November. I don't want to play again until my head is totally fresh. Also, I can't decide what site I should play on. I was thinking I'd just play UB, but now I'm not so sure. I do want to keep my entire bankroll on one site though. I think that will help me mentally.


Me and two of my roommates.


The head of my friends shrek costume on some random girl.


What State Street looks like.


Before.


After.