CARDRUNNERS

I had a typical shitty day at work. I really hate this job. This is the first time EVER that I can't wait for the summer to be over and it pretty much just started. The summer is usually my favorite time of the year. On monday I start working on site at a company called UOP. That is both a blessing and a curse. I think I will have more interesting stuff to do. However, it is in a city called Des Plaines which is about 50 min away from me w/ no traffic. I am guessing it will take a minimum of 2 hours to get there and home. That is absolutely miserable. I am guessing for the next few weeks I will have almost no free time on the weekdays. I just counted it up and I actually only have 6 weeks left. I am taking a week off for 4th of July and finishing up a few weeks before school starts again. Thank god I only committed to as little as possible. I can survive 6 more weeks.

After work I had to figure out my Q2 taxes. They were due yesterday, so I was scrambling to understand what I needed to do and then get to the post office in time. It all worked out. Uncle Sam sure is greedy...I hate paying so much, but I also love the country I live in and if that is what I'm required to do to live here then so be it.

I played like an hour of poker. I am both running and playing much better. I played on PP and picked up almost 4 buyins during that session. I'll take it.

The heat are back in the series, so that's good. I really want to see them win. I also don't want to lose my bet w/ my friend. I'd really like to rub it in that I won.

I think this weekend should be pretty solid. My friend Carrie called me last night about going to some party tonight. I went to high school with Carrie and I don't hang out with her all that much, but I have a good time when I do. Also, since I got back from Europe I've felt that when I've gone out it's been kind of stale. It's the same people doing the same thing everynight. It will be good to be around some different people.

Today is the start of the Cubs/Sox series in Chicago. I am a big Cubs fan so let's hope for the best, it hasn't been pretty the last few days. I'm actually not one of those die hard sox haters either, I root for the Sox when they play anyone but the Cubs.

I made a video this morning and then worked on some CR related stuff. Our new website is coming along and I am excited about having something that isn't as slow as it is now (that should be fixed within a few days). It's pretty amazing the amount of bandwidth we use with 340 full 45 minute videos to download, it's more bandwidth than all but the biggest sites on the net use.

I'm downloading Quicken right now so I can get a better handle on my personal finances. I don't think I spend too much money but I'd at least like to see where it's all going. I spend about 5k per month usually including my mortgage, insurance, food, whatever else I buy. I have had a few outlier months because I bought 2 expensive suits and furnished a 2300 sq foot condo with nice stuff so my average is over 5k/month this year but almost all months were like 3-4k per month except for the two outliers. If I can spend less than 75k a year I think that is doing very well considering I am making a good amount of money and I'm doing a lot of traveling/enjoying myself. It's fascinating to think about how much saving even 5k would make me 30 years down the line. I've learned you can't think too much about that though because then where do you draw the line (ie should i eat dinner tonight, 6 bucks will be 40 bucks in 40 years). I'm kidding but you get the point.

Tonight Beaumont is picking me up at 7pm to take me to his place in Lakeview. We'll probably drink at his place then go out in Wrigleyville or Lincoln Park.

tc

ps - my 1st floor is 90% furnished, just need some more pictures on the wall and a plant (or so interior designer says). When the cleaning lady cleans on Monday I will post some pictures because it looks pretty badass.

"wow, how did this happen?"

When I look back at the last few years of my life, it's amazing how much things have changed. I'll go over the last 5 or so years or so of my life and list the most memorable changes:

2002: Graduate high school, go to University of Illinois, learn to live on my own, fully apply myself in school for the first time ever (3.85 GPA!), and learn that things don't change as much as I thought they would after high school (people still care way too much about being cool, the jocks become the frat guys, girls still like douchebags, etc).

2003: Find out about online poker, start slacking off at lifeguarding that summer so I can play freerolls at pokerroom.com, figure out you can play for real money, make $5k online in 4 months, play way too much poker, drink way too much alcohol at the fraternity i for some reason joined. Look back on the year basically saying, "why did I do all those things?" Start to slack off a little bit in school, results are still there, though.

2004 - School is pretty easy, I don't need to go to class and I can get decent grades (3.5). Wow, I'm good at gambling online. Move from 1-2nl at the beginning of the year to 25-50nl by years end, play in 2 WPT events, cashing once. Go from completely normal binge drinking college kid to random 21 year old internet poker player making more than his parents. Endure some deaths of those close to me, float on seemingly unaffected but dealing with the pain in my own way -- channeling it into other activies, namely poker. Weird.

2005 - Consistently beat 10k buy in poker games on the internet over lots of hands. Somehow land hedge fund internship in NYC, perform well, receive job offer out of school but turn it down on a gut feeling that is partially due to a girl, make more money than I thought I would 20 years down the line. Start to see some of the negatives of the lifestyle, jealousy, greed, being taken advantage of, being told I was doing immoral activities, etc. Start to think..."wow..how did this happen?" Oh yeah, started a business called CardRunners.

2006. Wow, I'm finished with school. What happned to the last four years? Now what? Continue to make a ton of money playing poker, start to get bored with it, though. Realize it's not that great to just sit around all day on the computer. Realize I'm not as happy as I thought I'd be with this lifestyle. Float on.

This brings me to 2007. I can honestly say that I have never made as much "progress" as a person and professionally as I have in 2007.

CardRunners was a completely bullshit organization in 2005. Andrew and I didn't take it seriously enough, but what the hell did we know? We were 19 and 21 years old, had more money than we knew what to do with, and decided to start a business. This attitude sort of continued into late 2006, although we did much better towards the end of the year.

Honestly, this business is run pretty well now (I'm almost done patting myself on the back, trust me). We've put out 7 videos a week for the past 3 months, although there have been some quality control issues. We have a great marketing director, operations manager/admins, tech guys, development team (this site looks great [imo]), and last but not least, video producers.

We went from Andrew, Taylor, and a few other video producers making videos at the end of 2006, to having sbrugby, cts, Peachy_Keen, Menlo, Daut, and tons of other great instructors making regular content. Seriously, that's a great improvement.

Now, I realize I've just talked about CR in 2007. In some ways, that is fitting, because being involved in this business has shaped my 2007 more than anything else. I put so much thought, time, and energy into this business and I love doing that. As for other things, I made less in 2007 than in 2006 playing poker, which sucks, but was inevitable. My goal was to make $750k, and I didn't hit that from poker. I doubt I played more than 125k hands total, and most of my play was below 50/100, so I can't really expect to make 750k with those numbers.

I have learned so much this year. Seriously, so so so much. I can't stress enough that I feel this is my most important achievement in 2007. I don't care about money nearly as much as I used to. Money is only a way to keep score, it's just learning and achieving new things and success that I crave. The money will follow, I know that.

I feel completely confident in my ability to run both an internet business and a gambling related business. That's the most amazing thing that I have realized in 2007, CardRunners is the beginning. I'm sure I'm going to take some flak for this, but I'll be disappointed in myself if in 20 years I'm not looking back at low 7 figure incomes of 2007 and laugh at how much money I thought that was. Like I said, I don't care about money nearly as much as I used to, but I care about success and winning even more than ever. I don't think I'll ever be able to get rid of this. It's just something I can't turn off, I hate to lose and I try to take steps to make sure that it doesn't happen too often.

So, CR is going well. I never thought we would be having this much success. It makes me laugh thinking about Prahlad making fun of me for starting this training site a few years ago. I love proving people wrong, and I'm not tryign to single him out. There were others, you know who you are.

So, things are going well, but right now there is a crop of hungry young poker entrepreneurs looking to eat my lunch. You see, I don't want that to happen. This I know.

Here or some issues we are addressing with CR, we aren't perfect, but we are working to improve:

-Our SSNL and MSNL content is getting stale. This is more our fault than anything else, we just haven't really addressed these areas as much as we should have. I've been doing some work over the holidays to address this, and we have a plan for fixing this within the next 30 days.

-We work too inefficiently, too much collaborating, not enough "you do this, I'll do that, let's chat about it when we have some progress."

-We need to make sure it's a constant improvement process - New instructors, new products, better content, etc. This is an ongoing project.

Here are some things to look forward to in 2008:

-A new instructor should be announced tomorrow. Can't be 100% sure of that, but if I was a betting man, I'd expect to announce it. Think lead pro, great MTT mind, also great cash player.

-The biggest partnership in the history of online poker training sites (gasp!) I'm excited about this one, and it should bring some great benefits to CardRunners members, and to the business.

-We have a huge signing lined up for the Spring. This is more for the business/management side of CardRunners, but I'm pretty confident when we announce this people will say "Wow, how did CardRunners do that?"

-New products. I hope to have our newest product out by Feb 1., but that might be a bit ambitious. It should answer the question that all you online poker ballers have been asked "Hey! i heard you make lots of money at online poker....how can I do that?"

Much much more, but I'm excited.

So anyway...wow, how did this happen?

So as I suspected, I just rambled on in this post. 2007 was the year I will forever remember for CardRunners coming into it's own, and the year when I really realized how lucky I am to be in the position I am in. I'm making this pledge now to really make the most of the opportunities I have, so that 20 years from now, I say again "wow, how did this happen?"

tc

Hey guys.  Today I'm going to do something different and actually blog about poker.  I didn't play all that much last week as I had a test and other schoolwork to do, plus we had a party on Saturday (lots of fun btw).  Today there were a bunch of NLH games running.  I 6 tabled, 5 tables of 25/50 on FTP and Stars and a 50/100 table on Prima, and won about 50k, which was very nice and good for my confidence since I haven't played much 6 handed NLH lately.  Here are some hands from the session:

www.pokerhand.org/

In this first hand I flop top pair on a drawy board against Cole.  I think he's 3betting TT+ almost every time 4 handed CO vs BTN, so my hand is basically the same as AA except for the added equity he has with a T8 or JT type hand.  Against his actual hand I was in better shape than I would be with AA.  I think my play is marginally thin, might have to ask Cole himself what he thinks.

www.pokerhand.org/

In this hand I think Sam's range for check/calling the flop is mostly marginal made hands like KK-TT and weak Ax hands.  I hadn't been getting out of line postflop much (believe it or not) and decided it was a good spot to barrel.  I think he folds the turn unimproved almost every time with his hand, so I like my line.  Fortunately for me I hit a perfect river card and ended up stacking him.  My plan was to shove almost any river so I really lucked out.

www.pokerhand.org/

I'm not sure what I think of my play on this one.  The turn call is a little thin but I have decent equity against top pair plus thought I could represent some cards that didn't improve my hand.  On the river I think samh is capable of both bluffing and value betting fairly thinly, with stuff like sets, 2 pair, and maybe even a naked ace.  I am giving him great odds on the call but my line here is really believable as I would play any pair with a 5 the same way on the flop and turn.

Those were the most interesting hands.  I tried to find a losing hand for good measure but I only got stacked twice and they were very standard, as were the rest of the wins.  I might even play some more today as it's kind of crummy outside and I don't have much else to do.  Plus Grand Theft Auto IV comes out tomorrow and my poker career is probably over then because it looks SICK.  I don't even play video games much but I can see lots of time being put into that.

That's all I got for now.  Take it easy.

-Brian

So I turned 19 today, December 4th. Nothing special really. If I can manage to finish a paper I have due wednesday, I plan on getting black out drunk tonight. Didn't get much yet and I doubt I do. I don't really expect much from my friends or anything because theyre all broke college kids haha. I played two sessions today. The first was 1k hands 9 tabling 100nl again while skipping english because I didn't feel like writing a rough draft. Later on, after dinner and MNF, I played 500 hands of 4 tabling 200NL. I really didn't run THAT great all day and lost a bunch of medium size pots to dumbass shortstacks.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1767972 -definitely think I can find a fold here. What else would he have?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1767978 -doh

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1767982 -been working on being more aggro in position...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1767984 - SICK, SICK, SICK Cooler....

Today: +243.90 over 1,099 at 100NL, +367.10 over 465 at 200NL

Month: +1,271.90 over 3,321 hands.