CARDRUNNERS

I played for like an hour this morning. I got bored towards the end and wasn't paying attention, so I quit. I ran well.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?444762
Interesting hand. I was worried about a set on that board. After he called the flop I thought a hand like 1010, JJ or QQ seemed very likely. Obv the J turn isn't very good for those holdings. It may slow down 1010 and it puts me way behind JJ. There's also the chance that the guy has 88 or 99. Since QQ and maybe 1010 were what I needed him to have, I slwoed down a bit. Once he checks the river I'm pretty sure he has one of those hadns so I put out a nice value bet. He had 1010.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?444789
Can I fold the turn here? I've played enough poker to know what a set looks like and that sure as hell looks like a set w/ how he played it. Oh well, I took the standard line and paid him off.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?444793
Always fun when top pair gets action, even on a scary board like that. Ty for holding.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?444803
I made a great call here. I don't want to analyze this hand though since I play w/ him a lot.

This session: +4645.68
Overall: +15127.08

4122.92 behind pace

I love Christmas. I hope everyone has a great Christmas or whatever other holiday you celebrate this time of year. This truly is the greatest time of the year in my opinion. However, I'm pretty disapointed in the weather this year. I'd like for it to be cold and snowy. It's been like 40 degrees everyday lately. Oh well, worse things could happen. I'm with my family now in Michigan. We are in Detroit until the 26th and then we'll go up to our vacation house in the northern part of lower michigan. I'll be there until the 30th. My family is staying up north until the 2nd, but I wanted to be in Chicago for New Year's, so I'm flying home on the 30th.

We had "our" christmas yesterday. We decided to open our presents at home before we came to Michigan. In the past, we always celebrated christmas morning at my grandpa's, but he passed over a year ago and we have sold his house. Therefore, we are staying at my aunt's house. I didn't ask for much this year. I mostly wanted a leather coat and I knew that would pretty much take up all my gifts. That was ok with me. The coat I got is nice. I'm deciding if I'm going ot keep it or exchange it for another one. I'm gonna try it out the next few days and see if I like the look. I also got the new Nas cd. It's great. The new DMX cd isn't as good as I'd hoped.

Bears won today, but looked awfully shitty. They looked bad last week too. I hope they can get it together. If they go to the super bowl, Taylor and I are going to go.

Over the next few days, I'm going to come up with some new year's resolutions. I can tell you my first resolution is to actually stick with my resolutions I come up with this year. I'm usually pretty bad about that. I feel like New Year's is a great chance to make some improvements in your life. I really am working on thing like working out more, reading more, etc, so I'm going to include those in my resolutions and actually stick with them. I know another thing I'm going to focus on is playing a lot less poker in the next 5 months. I only have one semester left of school and therefore, I just don't want to be playing poker. Anyway, I'm going to make some more specific goals. I'll share them with you come New Year's.

So goes a good Beatles song and my day yesterday. No, I didn't lose thousands in poker. I lost some pride though. I'm up in Michigan and the weather isn't great. We usually do a lot of snow sports this time of year, but there is no snow this year. It's been like 35 and gloomy outside the few days we've been here. Therefore, we've resorted to games inside. I managed to lose pretty much everything I played yesterday. My cousin and I decided to play some HU nlhe for fun early in the day. I bluffed a lot and he never folded. I lost 2/3 matches (I only won the first one when my K10 beat his QJ on a QJxx board). On to the next game. We played risk. I took a shot and tried to take out my cousin with 4 cards. I would have made a set and been golden. If I didn't get him though, I was so spread out that I was in deep shit. I got down to having about 7 guys to take out 2. I couldn't do it. I was out not much later. Next game was Monopoly. I had every property in the game, albeit they were mortaged (from taking people out) and two sets of hotels up. My other cousin had two hotels set up as well. I was starting ot unmortgage and put up more houses when I hit two hotels in the same turn by rolling doubles. I decded to not give up and was able to make it around the board a few times without hitting a hotel again and I began rebuilding. I soon hit another hotel and I was done. Ugh. We took a break from the games and drank for awhile. We decided to play some fifa to finish the night. I feel like I'm a pretty good fifa player and I've had a good record vs my cousin so far this trip. After winning the first game, I got killed in the next two.

I plan on winning Risk today. My ego can't take more loses in games I feel like I am good at.

Now that the holiday week is over, it's time to get back into my routine. I need to come up with some resolutions for this year. I feel like I'm growing up. I'm about to graduate with college. I think that means its time to start working on self improvement things in my life. I need to start taking my health seriously and I would like to learn more things this year as well. In addition, I feel like its time that I start working on being more religious. I haven't come up with my specific resolutions yet, but I've been tossing some ideas around in my head. I'm gonna figure them out right now.

1. Take working out seriously. I started working out regularly at the start of the summer. I got a personal trainer, because I really didn't know what I was doing. In the summer I worked out 3 times a week and really focused on eating right (staying away from garbage and just pounded protein). I was able to put on 15 pounds or so during a month or two (I'm a really skinny guy). Since then, I've continued to workout but usually only twice a week and I gave up on the diet. I have stayed the same weight since school started. I weight about 175 or so (I'm 6'2). I would like to put on more weight and really see some improvements in my size. I want to workout at least 4 times a week and really focus on my diet. It won't be easy, but it's necessary to get the results I want.

2. Read two books a month. I enjoy reading, but I typically only read when I am traveling. I would like to read a lot of books this year. It's enjoyable and a good way to learn new things and to just get away from the computer/tv lifestyle that seems to dominate my life these days.

3. Work on learning spanish better. I just discovered this awesome program called The Rosetta Stone. My cousin has it. It seems like a great way to get better at speaking a foreign language. I took spanish for 4 years in high school, but I'm not so good at it anymore. I've always wanted to be fluent in a foreign language, but I've always been lazy. I'm not going to put any stipulations on this, because I don't know how practical it is, but I will make an effort.

4. Spend much less time playing poker this next semester and focus on enjoying my last year of college. I can use the time I save by not playing to put towards the above goals. I am pretty burned out on playing right now anyway. It seems like a good time to take a break. I will have all the time in the world to play once I graduate.

5. Keep improving CR to make it the best training site out there. We have come an incredibly long way since this time last year. I think we can still make a ton of improvements. I am really looking forward to graduating school so that I can put more time into CR. It's frustrating at times that I can't focus on the business as much as I'd like.

6. I want to integrate religion into my life more. I grew up in a very Catholic family. I even went to Catholic high school. When I am at home, I go to church every sunday with my family. I never go on my own though. I was talking to my brother about it around christmas time and I made the comment that I really respect the people that go to church every sunday. It's not easy. I wish I would do it. I'm going to start trying to go. Not necessarily every sunday at first, but even once a month is better than nothing. I don't consider myself a very religious person, but I believe in God and I think that basing your life on the principles that Jesus teaches is a great way to live. It's hard to argue with what he teaches. I would like to have more of that positive influence in my life.

It's going to be hard to do all of these things, and I likely won't accomplish all of them. I want to at least make an effort towards it though. If I can successfuly do at least one of these things, I think it will make an improvement in my life.

I hope everyone has a great New Year on the tables and in the real world.