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.

Every summer we will go golfing with all of my friends. Most of my friends almost never play golf so it's more just hanging out then anything. We always end up drinking a lot and having a good time. Actually the first time we did it we actually got in a fight by the club house. It's the only time I've ever heard of a fight breaking out on a golf course. There were 3 guys in the group in front of us who were about 25 and hammered. For some reason (i forget) we exchanged some words on the 18th tee. I think one of my friends accidently hit into them. He apologized, but the guys were jackasses so both groups starting talking shit. Well we let them hit and they got out to their ball. My other friend, who is terrible, went ahead and hit. He hit the best shot of his life and actually hit one of their carts. They screamed at us from the fairway and we yelled back, but I assumed that was all it would come to. We finished up the last hole w/ nothing happening. As everyone was cleaning out their carts 2 of the guys from the group in front of us drove in next to my buddy and hit him with a golf club. Considering we had 3 college athletes, including a boxer, with us, that was a terrible move by them. My friends started just wailing on the 3 guys. They all had bloody faces when it was done and it turns out one had to get 12 stiches on his face. I was actually in the bathroom for most of the fight and only caught the end. I'm pretty pissed I didn't see it all. Anyway, it was dumb and I was embarrassed that happend, but it makes a good story.

Back to this year...we drank a lot, but didn't cause any trouble this time. We just had a solid good time. I played pretty well for awhile, but the wheels came off as I drank more. By about the 14th hole I started playing terrible. it's okay though, I was just playing for fun anyway.

Today I am going to play a bunch of MTTs. I am especially excited for the 1k event on stars.

I went to see Trey Anastasio yesterday. I used to be a big Phish fan (Trey was lead singer) and I still enjoy the music when I listen to it. Trey always puts on a good concert and he definitely didn't dissapoint tihs time. I took off from work about 30 min early and took the express train downtown. We found a bar that didn't card us and drank there for awhile. We ended up doing a few rounds of shots and I was pretty drunk by the time we left the bar. We drank a ton at the concert and just got retarded.

Right now, I'm wishing I hadn't gotten so retarded. I haven't had to get up early after drinking a lot in a long time (mostly because I haven't been drinking at all during the week). I have to say that coffee really seems to help with hangovers. Also, I took a 30 min nap at 8am. I got to work on time, but opted to go inside 30 min late so that I could try to look like a normal person and not someone who looks like they are dying. I think the nap helped me achieve that.

The office is totally dead today and the guy that typically is the one to give me work is not here today. It should be a very relaxed Friday. Hopefully I can leave early too.

My Vegas trip is confirmed now. I am definitely going. For awhile there it looked like it wasn't going to work out. The problem was that I need to be in Atlanta for work on Monday July 31st. I was able to work it out with my company so that I could fly from Vegas to Atlanta and then back to Chicago at the end of the week. It worked out well because that meant that the company picked up half the price of my flight. When you book a flight this late, it is very expensive, so that was huge on their part. I will get out there about 6pm on Friday July 28th and fly out at about 4pm on Sunday. It's a very short stay, but it will give me the chance to meet a lot of people, which is great. It's pretty cool to finally put faces to people you've only known online.

Yesterday I played a pretty long session, but didn't achieve much. I won about 1k, so that means I fell back even further behind my pace.

Today, I saddled up on Party and UB w/ the intention of getting back into the hunt. I ran pretty well and won one of the biggest pots I've won in a long time when the villian got coolered very bad. I'm pretty sure I am going to play more later. My friends are all going into Chicago tonight, so I'm stuck at home.

The golf yesterday didn't turn out as well as I'd have hoped. The weather was bad all day, but we decided to take the chance and go out and play anyway. It started raining around the 5th hole. The course was pretty empty so we decided to take a break at my house by the 6th green and see if the rain slowed down. We also need to pick up some more beer. It turned out that there were endless twosomes behind us. After smoking a bowl and waiting 20 minutes or so we decided to go over to hole 9 which is across the street from me. It was clear sailing until the 14th hole. It started to rain really hard. We decided to smoke another bowl and wait it out under some trees. It didn't let up and wasn't showing any signs of letting up. We eventually called it a day and went back to my house. We hung out and ordered a few pizzas. All in all, it was a pretty laid back day, but fun nonetheless. I was glad to finally meet EmpireMaker. He's a really solid guy. I also was able to give him my mic, so he will have one that works now in order to make a video. I was also able to get a little strategy talk in with Taylor and Blake. I've got a few things I'm going to work on in w/ my game.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?451259
Steal w/ a semibluff. Pretty standard, but somewhat interesting.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?451310
wow. That is a sick sick beat for the villian. I cold called preflop so it's very difficult for him to put me on KK. The reason I did that was because I didn't want to build a big pot OOP w/ KK when we both had deep stacks and my opponent was seemingly solid. The flop was great and I decided to c/r. There is a pretty wide range that I would c/r there. He came over the top and I was immediately licking my chops. I pushed and he called of course. Yes, there is the possibility of QJ but I don't think either one of us should get away from our hand there. I'm just glad to be on the right side of that one. I've been set over setted a few times lately, including twice yesterday, so this was a nice change.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?451370
Funpoker is a pretty wild player. I was pretty sure he didn't have a pair higher than 8s here. I held my breath and called. It's a pretty big pot for party too.

Last two sessions: +14055.16
Overall: +24260.54

5989.46 BEHIND pace

For those of you who don't know Lou was taking bets saying I'd make the goal. It's not done yet, but a 3k loss todya doesn't help me out one bit.

Thanks for all of you who took the time to respond to my last post. I gave it some thought and I think the response I'll tell people when they ask what I'm doing will go something like this "I started my own online business a year ago and it's done very well, so I'm going to pursue that." I think that sounds a lot better than "I'm gonna play cards for a living."

What I'm doing is definitely taking a risk. However, life is no fun if you never take risks. If all goes completely wrong and it doesn't work at all, I'll still be a young guy with a college degree and a lot of money invested in the bank.

While I was feeling very stressed a few days ago, I'm feeling a lot better now. I'm coming to peace with my decision. I know that I just need to work on managing my time. That will be the most important part of all of this. At least for now.

Even though I didn't make 85k this month. I really do feel like I acheived what I set out to do. I made a huge sum of money, but more importantly I felt like I really made improvements to my game. I got a ton better at handling tilt at 10/20 and also got a ton better at not playing when I didn't feel I would play my best. That's huge for me. I have no doubt in my mind that if I had kept playing high volume I would have made my goal. Coming back to school just let me realize there are other/better things to do when you're a college kid. While I was at home I didn't have many options. I wasn't working this month while my friends were mostly still working. Also, I wasn't 21 so I was left out a lot when they went out at night. Here I'm with a ton of kids who have nothing to do during the day and we can all go out at night (only have to be 19 yrs old to get in bars here). That may sound like a cop out, but I don't think it is. Enjoying my last year of college is def a priority for me over sitting in front of a computer, even if I'm giving up a lot of money by not playing. I only have one year left here and I want to make the most of it. I'm sure everyone out there understands that.

Anyway, I played for a little over an hour today. I was up about a buyin or two early, but gave it all back and then some. Nothing of much importance has been happening in my sessions lately. I just lose 1k here and 1k there.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?479680
This was one of the first hands I played. I was pretty sure the guy was stealing and my hand was one that if I got called, I probably still had some outs. He told me he had 6 high.

There's always tomorrow. I'd need a massive day though and I'll need to run super hot. I've seen crazier things though.

Today: -3773.20
Overall: +66137.88

16362.12 behind pace

It's been a few days since I updated. So far I've played a reasonable amount of poker this weekend. I've mostly plyaed 5/10 and I've basically crushed. I am going to try playing a lot of 5/10 this month and see how this month stacks up to last month. The 10/20 games on party have been pretty difficult lately and 5/10 seem so soft to me after playing 10/20 for a few months. I won 10k on friday and 2k on sunday. Hopefully today I can pick up a few more buyins.

Saturday was a crazy day. We had a home football game and like we do for every home football game we headed to the bars early. Typically I try to go at 8am. I'm a senior now though and it's hard to get up that early. Also, this weekend it was a night game. We ended up getting t our bar of choice at about 10am. Unfortunately there were only 3 girls at the entire bar, but what can you do. We still had a great time. I managed to get kicked out of the bar at about 3pm when I decided it would be a good idea to start smashing the empty plastic pitchers around me against the wall. The guys that worked there didn't think it was as funny as I did. I'm not one to really be destructive and I've never been kicked out of a bar in the states before (canadians are bastards about kicking people out of bars, but thats another story) so it just goes to show how drunk I was.

My friend, Sean, decided to leave with me and we headed over to my friends frat senior house. We drank there for awhile and manage to keep drinking all day long. We went out to the bars again at like 10pm, but the bar we went too was too crowded and hot. I went back to our apartment with the intention of just going to bed. Not long after, my friend called me and told me he was at hte bar that is right next to my apartment. I headed down and managed to stay out until about 4am. Sean ended up giving me a deadleg later in the night. A dead leg is when you knee someone in the upper thigh. I had said a few things to him I probably shouldnt have and he thought itd be funny to put me back in line. I'm still pissed at him for doing that because now two days later I'm still having trouble walking.

Taylor is coming into town tomorrow and then we're gonna go out for my 21st. I can't believe I'm finally about to be 21. It's been way too long of a wait.

I took a shitload of pictures today and I'm gonna post them on the internet, but I want to find a good site to post them on. I used to use webshots but I don't like that site and it also only lets you put up so many pictures. I've heard that yahoo has a pretty good section for pics. Let me know if you guys have any suggestions.

I'll try to save some HH's and give an update on my playing from today later.

It was a crazy week this week. The last 3 nights we went out hard. Tuesday I went out for my 21st as I did wednesday and then last night we went out for my friend's 22nd. The interesting thing was that I was probably the most drunk last night. We went to an off campus bar that actually serves real drinks. The mixed drinks were stiff and the shots were big. The on campus bars generally have bullshit shots and weak mixed drinks. All three nights were a lot of fun. I'm ready to tone it down a bit though and get back into a normal schedule. I think tonight I'm actually going to play a poker tournament with some of my friends. They have asked me to play a few times, but I haven't played yet. I told them last time that I'd play the next time they had a game. I generally play pretty poorly in home games. I'm gonna try to play well tonight. I need to make some cash to keep up with my spending at the bars.

I played some poker today and ran well. I had AK win vs 55 allin preflop for a 5k pot. Samh113 also slowplayed a flop set against me and I filled up on the river with my pair of Queens. That was also a 5k pot. I played on stars, ftp, and ub. I lost on FTP like I always do. I haven't booked a win there in probably 2 months now. I think I'm going to quit playing there. It just doesn't seem to make much sense at this point. I also tend to play extra loose there. I'm sure that's part of the problem.

I think I'll try to get in a long party poker session tomorrow or maybe tonight if I don't end up going out. I'll probalby go out though.

I'm gonna post all of the pictures from the last few days right now. Same link should work to see them.

Taylor just wrote a long blog that sums up this week pretty good. I'd recommend checking that out if you want to know more about what we've been up to.

This year has been awesome. I definitely agree with Taylor that this year has been better than last year. I think mostly because this year we have friends from last year to hang out with and we don't have to meet all new people. Also, we have a few new people this year that have been hanging out with us that are really cool. One person we met this year is Jeneene Deeb. She's our age and shes really cool. We also have been hanging out with Amanda from pokerwire.com. She's also a lot of fun to be around. I gotta say that it's nice to have a few girls around. Last year it was always all guys and that gets a little old. We've also met some cool cardrunners guys and had some drinks with them.

I've played two sessions of poker and I'm up about 1500 or some from them. THe first one I played drunk 1/2nl and pretty much donked around. The second session I played 5/5nl and ran really well. Mkind caught the bad end of a couple of hands vs me. One hand we got allin preflop with his aces vs my jacks. I sucked out on the river. I didn't feel too bad though because he slowrolled me preflop. I also flopped a set against him that turned into a boat by the river. He had flopped a flush and just called all the way. Other than those two hands I didn't have any other really notable hands.

Tomorrow the tourny stars. I'm pretty excited and I feel good about my chances. I do have some HW to get done for school that I'm not sure when I will complete. I'll figure something out though. I'll make a post tomorrow with how I did.