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

So I just read Taylor's blog about the other night when he was in my neighborhood. I guess he got pulled over and the cop told him that it's a nice neighborhood and the people don't like people with shitty cars turning around in their driveways. Well, that reminds me of how much the cops in my area suck at life. Unfortunately, I managed to have a few runins with the law in high school (i got two underage drinking tickets). The 2nd one I got was my graduation night. We had about 10 people chilling in my friends basement. We weren't causing any trouble and we were just hanging out. A few kids were playing video games and I was jamming out on guitar with a few other kids. My friends mom called the police ot tell them we would have some cars parked in the driveway overnight (they give tickets if you don't call them). The cops came out and saw that there were empty beer cans in the recycle bin which was sitting out for the next mornings pickup. My friend's graduation party w/ family and friends had been earlier so there was obviously a lot of empty beer cans. The cops then knocked on the door and demanded entrance. My friends parents of course said no and told them to get a warrant. Warrant, who needs a warrant when you can just arrest the parents? So thats what they did, they arrested both my friends parents and then proceeded to give us all underage drinking tickets. We had hid all the beer by thne, but they made us do a breathalizer. Going back, I would have had some balls and told htem to fuck off ,but I was young and scared by the police back then. The police also had the balls to tell us that they were doing us a favor by only giving us 1 ticket (they claimed there were 2 other things they could have ticketed us for). They also then faxed mug shots ot the local news. My friends parents made the 10oclock chicago news the next day. They turned it into a pretty big deal. All of the chicago radio talk shows were talking aobut the situation. Pretty crazy.

I'm sitting at work right now trying to kill some time. There was a new episode of entourage last night which was a good episode. I love that show. I convinced my dad to let me buy HBO for the house so I could watch it. I have always wanted HBO. My family recently got digital cable wihle i was abroad, but my dad is concerned about my 10 yr brother seeing things on HBO. I told him I would password protect the channel. HBO is badass.

I've decided to hit the books per se and really reinvent my poker game. My numbers for the year are solid, but I'm not where I wanted to be in June when I set goals starting the year. I'm on pace ot make about what I made last year and I was hoping to about double what I made last year. My mtt and sng game has fallen off and when I look at my aggression factor in PT it's not where I want it to be. I look at the players that I consider the best online cash game players (ie. sting, taylor, EM2) and their aggression factor is well over 3. Mine is hovering around 2 lately and thats just not good. So, I want to work on both cash and mtt/sng. I plan on studying a lot of the videos on this site and also on PXF. I think I'll mostly play 5/10 while I work on my game.

I made it very deep in the FTP 200k yesterday. I took 23/~1100 people. I played great teh whole tourny and my hands kept holding up. I ended up losing a massive pot to bust w/ QQ vs KK. I almost sucked out too. If I had caught my flush, I think I would have been in GREAT shape to win. I also gave the hand a lot of thought and I think I should have folded QQ preflop. I had plenty of chips ot make the final table by chipping away at small pots. I should have avoided a big pot where I was gambling at all costs and I didn't. I think my tourny game is coming around, but I'm having trouble closing. I think by years end I can be one of the top mtt players on the net. That is my plan. I won't play nearly as many mtts as a lot of the players, but I just want to get solid at them again.

So I meant to get on the other day and post another blog, but I got caught up. We went to my Uncle's place for the 4th and since hes a traditionalist, he has no internet or phone landline. That meant I couldn't get online at all. Oh yea, he also doesn't have cable tv. Wtf? They are in a rental house for now, so that explains it a bit. I couldn't live in a house without those things though.

Anyway, we are in the northern part of lower Michigan. My Great Grandpa bought land up here that he could hunt in 1947. The land has been in the family ever since. Over the years, more land has been bought and added on so that we have a pretty large piece of land. It is located in the middle of nowhere and the land consists of all woods. The nearest town is about 10 minutes away and it only has a few shops. It's definitely much different than what I'm used to in Chicago. I really enjoy getting away from my busy life and just relaxing.

We went fly fishing on monday. I didn't catch anything, but I still had a good time. I've fly fished about 5 or 6 times in my life and I'm not that great, but I have the basics down. It's something that I want to get better at as I get older.

I've also gotten out to play golf twice. I shot an 89 and a 90. Historically, those aren't great scores for me, but I am happy with them. My game has been so bad and I feel like its finally coming around. The courses we have played have been very tough w/ slopes in the high 130s as well. Today I shot the 90 and putted horribly. I think If I can iron out a few more leaks I can be back in teh low 80s, which would be great.

Hope everyone had a happy 4th.

Today I lost about 6500. That's more than my stop loss limit. That occured thanks to being down and then losing 3k at the same time on two other tables...sweet. Here are some highlights.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?441554
First big pot of the day.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?441555
I like how I played this hand. I actually won it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?441573
Pretty standard stacking. Not much I can do.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?441579
I gues it was a pretty bad raise on river. The player is terrible and it sure looked like a blocking bet to me. Stupid to raise though I guess.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?441581
I probably should have just folded on the turn. ack.

The last two happened at the same time and thats when I called it quits.

I think I played pretty decent. What can ya do. This 85k is probably going to be pretty hard unless I run well most of the month. I can't have too many more sessions like this one and the one the other day.

I'm kind of pissed that the stars, ftp and ub games have been terrible lately. The party games seem to play with a pretty high variance for some reason. That vaelosis dude is ruining the stars games and nothing has been running on ftp or ub.

I'm going to go get high and watch V for Vendetta. I love not being 21. I would have been out getting wasted and not playing tonight if I could get into a bar.

Oh yea, I did win about 1k playing PLO for a video earlier.

I don't think I'm going to have much time to play tomorrow because I am going to go see the MLS all stars play Chelsea. That'll be a good time.

Today: -6538.35
Overall: 1889.89

9110.11 behind pace

Digging a hole for myself.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?442152
First reasonable sized pot of the day. It sure reminds me of that KKK hand from yesterday. This time I didn't raise the river.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?442187
Chasers never prosper.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?442190
THe guy wasn't solid. I wan't to suck him in here w/ the min raise on the turn. I figured if he called he'd have enough left to try a bluff on the river or just value bet the worst hand. He only had $750 left though so I obv wasn't folding to any river card with my hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?442198
Ty river card. I guess I could have folded to his raise on the river, but it wasn't that much more and I think he does that with some hands I have beat.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?442206
Pretty standard until river. Why I put almost $900 in on that river beats me.

The last two hadns happened at the same time and thats when I called it quits.

I again lost more than my stop loss. It's tough to know exactly where you are at when you are playing 4 different sites at once and I don't like to be in the habit of constantly checking my balances. I knew I was starting to hover around the point and then I lost the last two hands so I called it quits.

Bad bad day.

In the last two days I have stacked 1 person, but have been stacked countless times. Not a good scenario for winning.

Today: -9766.91
Overall: -7877.02

21627.02 behind pace

I just realized somehow I was off with my day numbering. Looks pretty dumb that I have August 27 listed as Day 26. Anyway, I just have no urge to play poker lately and I don't want to force it. Forcing myself to play poker when I don't feel I will play my A game is something that I have worked on a lot and it wouldn't seem right to just ignore that and play. I am somewhat dissapointed because I feel I won't be able to play enough to be able to get to my goal. That being said, I'm very pleased with how the month went overall. I think I learned a ton and I won a lot of money. I also have gained a lot of confidence. I know am much more confident about how I stack up at the 10/20nl level. It's good to know to have the added comfort of that.

I think part of the reason I'm burned out is because I played so much early in the month. Another reason is that I'm back at school. I'm busy getting the year started and I'm also enjoying the time I am spending with my friends. A lot of my friends I hadn't seen in almost 9 months due to being abroad.

I'm hoping I can get a big urge to play one night and just play through the night and have a huge session. I just don't feel like I have it in me to play a long session. The few times I have played lately I feel like I want to quit after only playing 30 minutes. That's not how I usually feel.

Another aspect that I think has played into the way I'm feeling latley is that the fact that I'm not planning on taking a job after college is finally hitting me. I decided not to do the 5 year program for accounting that I had always planned on and therefore a lot of my friends are curious as to why. It seems weird to tell them that I'm going to run my website and play cards for my job. I find it pretty scary in fact.

I only write all this because I know a lot of people have been following my progress and I feel that I need to explain as to why I feel I won't acheive my goal. I was in great shape right before I left for school. It was just a combination of a lot of things that made me need to step back from poker for a bit.

The last I played poker was sunday night. I saw Elky sitting and had to sit for a bit. I never got into a groove and played quite poorly. I stopped after about 30 min and I dropped about 3k.

Today: 0
Overall: +69911.08

7088.92 behind pace