CARDRUNNERS

I can't find my last year's resolutions, so I'll look at 2007's.  It is quite embarrassing to not have most of these completed:

            Get in shape with abs diet

            Stay in touch with/hang out with friends more

            Quit procrastinating/stay busy

            Try to keep poker separate from other parts of life

           

            Poker Goals

                        Be at 5/10 by end of year

                        Keep controlling tilt

                        Have a 10k profit month by april

                        Post more hands in forum/blog

Keep bankroll growing, move up to 1/2 NL by end of jan., 2/4 by end of april, 3/6 by end of September, 5/10 by end of dec. (30 buyin rule)

Win a decent sized tourney ($5k+)

Put in consistent hours/specific times to play, not here and there

Only play more than 5 tables when comfortable

No whining about bad beats to other people

 

It's 2 years later, I'm in the same shape (maybe 5-10 pounds lighter), I still procrastinate and most of these poker goals have yet to be met.  I think they are a bit unrealistic, but this was when the games were good.  And that january I made $6k, then $9k in february, and then it went to shit.  I don't know if I changed, or the games did so much, but I haven't had a month over $3k since then.  I think my confidence is still shot a bit since then.  Maybe I was just overly confident, who knows.  But here are some new goals:

Get a REAL job.  This is so important.  I desperately need a job right now so I can have a steady income and stop worrying about my bills and whatnot.  Then my poker bankroll can grow.

Get a flat stomach.  Not realistic, I've tried, I just think I have to keep sticking to a healthy diet that doesn't veer off for a month or so.  That's what kills it.

Continue to stay focused throughout the day.  So many days I find myself procrastinating and not getting anything accomplished.  This is the time to take risks and make money, and yet I sit here.  Part of this is that I have to focus most of my attention on finding a job and being able to support myself.  After that, I can begin looking into investments and whatnot.

Poker:

Reach supernova.  Definitely doable, I'm at stars for good, I can do this.
Make $50k.  Also doable.  But only if I focus, try not to tilt, and continue to work on my game.
Be at 1/2 by year's end.  Also doable.
Win a tourney for more than $5k.  I always put this on here, but I always come up short.  Maybe some day, that'd be an awesome feeling.


I don't whine about bad beats to anyone anymore, so that's good.  And I try to put in solid hours when I can, not just f'in around.

But what's most important to me is being happy and having my girlfriend happy.  This always seems to hold true, and I hope that continues.  She's the most important person to me in the world, she's really all I need.

...but i also need a job.


gl,

Andy

Dear Blog,

Sorry I've been away. It was a sick December with lows under $5k and high's above 12k. It had me sick on the stomach as the fate of my poker career seemed to hang in the balance but in the end, I arose from the ashes reborn.

It's 2009. I haven't written on a check or bill yet so I'm going to see if I do my usual fuck-up and write the previous year. My new year's resolutions are simple. Go hard or go home period. It seems that this catch phrase is applicable to every facet of my life. If I'm going to play poker, manage my roll better the fat cats did portfolios on Wall Street. Get back to fundamentals. Table select. Take note of the weak players. Exploit. Too much last year and in my past I've gotten away from these simple truths and where has it lead me? Still a small fish in a big pond but mark these words, this is my year. I'm like a red shirt freshman ready to get my big start.

2009 Goals:

Life:

1) Strive to be a better father than my father. Before you get it twisted, I had an awesome dad. I don't think I could've asked for a better dad and someone actually showed up. I want my son to be able to utter these same words.

2) Get back to God. Not everyone is religious and me personally, I rather be my own theologian than go to church but if I'm going to truly study the higher power, I need to ask more questions and give more of myself.

3) Vacation once a season. Whether it's a three day weekend or a week on a resort, I got to make moves. The bonus of being a pro online player is an air card and a laptop. I know I got a family so they can come too sometimes:-).

Poker Goals:

I'm not going to give necessarily a $ figure that I want but this is my minumum for the year.... Drum roll please.....

$72,000. $6k a month will give me some investment money, pay the bills and maybe stack a little for a rainy day. I promise this year will be my breakthrough performance and I will track it all here for you to see.

Initial Bankroll 1/1/09: 13,058.43
PLO: $4,012.00
SNG: $2,556.00
MTT: -$147.92
Bonus: $695
Total: $$7,115.08

-Locks

Hey guys, I've been pretty busy since my last update so I haven't gotten around to a resolutions post yet.  I'm not even sure if I did this in the past but after I write this I'm going to check and see and make a separate blog about results of them.  Anyway, I'll get to my 2009 resolutions/goals at the end of this blog.

Poker is starting to look up, I was struggling at 25/50 for a week or so after moving down but lately I'm starting to do some winning.  I think I'm up about 70k since moving down now, although part of that is from taking pieces of friends in bigger games.  I guess I've also sold off some pieces too, but I might even be down in those sessions overall.  At 25/50 which has been 95+% of my play the last few weeks I'm probably up pretty close to that 70k, although I haven't tracked it because I only have my Macbook Air with me over break and it's too much of a pain transferring all of the hands over to Windows, and FTP lags too much on Windows to play there.  I've been playing a lot of HU PLO and it's quite fun and there are some really good spots at times, although some tough players as well.  Several of the tough players avoid me while most of the fish still play me though, so it's nice.  I'm up a little bit at HU PLO but I think I'm running decently under expectation, just judging by some of my allin luck, but nothing terrible.  Seems pretty easy to go on a big heater in these games so I'm hoping I have one soon.

On New Year's Eve I went to a house party at a friend's, it was a good time and I got to see a bunch of high school friends whom I hadn't seen in a while.  Nothing much more to say about that I guess.  This past weekend I went with 8 of my friends to Turning Stone.  I had a lot of fun and I think I even might have made a little bit of money gambling there (unheard of)!  I didn't really play any serious poker, I played a 1/2 session one night more for the entertainment value.  There are some characters in these games.  One particularly funny situation that occured went like this:  a hand goes down where a guy bets $10 on a monotone flop, the woman to his left calls, and a bigger woman in late position makes it $25.  The guy thinks for about 10 seconds and the woman who raised calls the clock!  This guy was quite a character too, the kind you could see getting in a fight at the table.  Anyway he makes some comment and folds after a little more thought and the other woman folds as well.  Then for the next half hour or so, every time the bigger woman has a decision and doesn't act INSTANTLY, he calls the clock on her!  This is all complete douchebaggery but since it was just 1/2 and I was just messing around I thought it was pretty entertaining.  The standard live pro comments, such as putting people on an individual hand that may or may not be accurate at all, rather than a range, were pretty funny too.

Besides the 1/2 game I just played some craps, blackjack, fruit wheel, and the greatest pit game in the world, Texas Hold'Em Bonus.  I like games that actually make you make decisions, and this one has decisions that are best suited to be made by someone who's good at poker.  It's especially fun with a group of friends because you can all collude and make better decisions.  For example, with no info 96o is probably a play, but if your 2 friends have K9 and 6T, fold away!  It really makes me wonder if you can beat the house with this extra info, probably not, but it's fun to speculate!

Over break I started watching the Sopranos, which I somehow hadn't seen.  It's a pretty great show, Tony is just an awesome character and it's really cool seeing how all his relationships unfold.  I've only seen Season 1 so far so I'm really looking forward to the rest.  On another note, if you're a reality TV fan, you have to check out Rock of Love Bus.  I had watched a few episodes here and there of the other Rock of Love seasons, but OH MY GOD!!  The staff for this show successfully handpicked the most insane, over the top girls ever for this show.  I watched the premiere on Sunday and basically couldn't stop laughing for an hour straight.  Marcia the Brazilian girl is my favorite.  She gets in an argument with some other girl because she's wasted and acting like an idiot, and the other girl dumps beer on her.  When they interview her later she's like "I can't believe she did that.  You just don't waste alcohol like that!"  Such a great quote!

Ok time for the resolutions and goals for 2009.  As I said, I'm not sure if I did this for 2008 but if so I'll either edit this blog or make another one.  Anyway, here they are.

1.  Make more productive use of my time.

This is a pretty important one.  Way too often I just go on my computer and browse 2+2, Facebook, other stuff that's just not important.  I waste so much time doing this.  I'm not talking about cutting down on time actually playing poker, just the time when I have no intent of playing and just browse around on my computer for no reason, when I could otherwise be getting work done, exercising, socializing, reading stuff that's actually meaningful, etc.  I really want to start using my time better.

2.  Get in better shape.

The obligatory resolution.  To be fair, I've actually already started doing this, since last summer I've lost about 15 pounds.  But I can do better without a doubt.  Since I have some equipment right inside my house there's really no excuse for not working out, although in the fall I made them a bit too often.  Eating well also falls under this category, and I did a good job of this for a while but lately have slacked a bit, although everyone does for the holidays.  My solutions to this are planning on grilling a lot and just cutting down on late night eating.  Shouldn't be too hard I think, for me getting myself to work out 3+ days a week every week is the bigger challenge.

3.  Perform well in school.

I did a pretty good job of this in the spring, although my grade in my Econ class was pretty weak, not good since it's my major.  I've generally been pretty good with schoolwork but I've slacked at times with stuff like going to early classes and going to office hours, which I don't think I've done once, even though I've certainly needed it a few times, like with this Econ class.  I want to stop being lazy in spots like that.  Overall I've been pretty good with staying focused in school though and just want this to continue.

4.  Improve my social life a bit.

My social life is certainly not bad at all, I have some great friends and have lots of fun.  But sometimes I feel like I'm not spending as much time with friends as I should be.  I'm very good friends with my 2 roommates and hang out with them a lot, same goes for Bruce (cornellxc), but I have some other great friends in my frat and from my freshman floor who I feel like I don't hang out with enough.  Some nights I'll just stay in for no better reason than "I'm not really in the mood to go out" or "It's cold outside" or "I don't want to walk."  This is pretty silly and I want to stop doing that and become a little bit closer to my other friends.  Also, I haven't really had a serious girlfriend ever, and I'm not totally sure it's even a good idea to have one in college, but I think I'm ready for some change there.  I think my overall social life goal of just going out more should help me there.

5.  Become a bit more of a bankroll nit.

Over the past couple years I've played a good amount of hands at nosebleed stakes.  I've also very rarely sold off action.  I guess I just thought that it was never worth giving away EV.  I think my philosophies here have done a complete 180.  Right now I'm just grinding 25/50 because I don't have enough money online to even consider playing nosebleeds, although I have played a couple juicy 200/400 games with less than half of my action.  In the fall of 2007 I had a similar downswing at nosebleeds and ended up grinding 10/20 for a bit, then 25/50 for about 4-5 months before rebuilding my roll to the point where I could play nosebleeds.  I've always had a system where I'd play nosebleed games underrolled, but only to a point where I could still comfortably play 25/50.  I've realized that this is just pretty stupid and can cause swings way bigger than I should be having with the amount of money I have.  So for now, I'm just going to mostly grind 25/50 comfortably overrrolled.  Once I win some more money back, I'll start taking more shots at bigger games, but I'll sell off good chunks of my action.  No games really ever run between 25/50 and 200/400 (rarely at least) and jumping 8x in stakes is pretty stupid, so I'll probably play a bunch of 200/400 with 30-50% of my action once I get to around 500-600k online.  While sacrificing EV isn't optimal, pushing the limits of variance is just a bad idea.  There's no good reason I should have had 2 downswings as big as the ones I've had.  Playing 500/1000 with 100% of my action was a terrible idea as well and will never happen again, at least til I have a $10m net worth, and that's not likely to happen anytime soon.  So my goal in 2009 is to become a 25/50 regular who takes shots at bigger games when they're good, rather than a 200/400 regular who doesn't bother to look for action at 25/50 most of the time.

Also I started a well in the new CR forum dedicated to them.  I have plenty of time to answer questions in the coming week so ask away!

Hope the new year's treating you all well.  Peace!

Brian

 Hey guys.  I've never been great at following through on New Year's Resolutions in the past, so in this blog I'm going to grade myself on how I'm doing with all of them so far.  I think doing this will help reinforce them and maybe lead me to actually follow them.  So, without further ado:

1.  Make more productive use of my time.

This one is tough to judge.  On one hand, I'm writing this at 11AM, lying in my bed on my laptop, haven't eaten anything yet today, and I think this happens too many days where I just wake up and do absolutely nothing for an hour or 2.  I've probably browsed 2+2 way too much in general too.  On the other hand, I think I've gotten a good handle on routines, which is pretty important when I'm trying to balance so many things.  Basically from whenever I wake up til about 7PM I go to classes if I have any, do schoolwork, and in the meantime keep an eye out for good poker games.  When a bunch of games are running I take a work break and play for an hour or 2, then resume after.  Also, I take an hour out of this time to work out, usually around 4 or 5.  This schedule has gone pretty well, as I've done a pretty good job getting work done, played a decent volume of hands for being in school, and done a pretty good job with workouts (more on that later).  Around 7 I eat dinner, if I eat at my frat (surprisingly excellent food from our chef) I drive to the house for 7, otherwise just order food because I'm too lazy to cook.  Hopefully I stop being too lazy to cook someday.  My roommate cooks occasionally and we just got a George Foreman grill though.  Campusfood in Ithaca is awesome and has a wide variety of good stuff though, so I can't really bring myself to cook instead of that.  After dinner I finish my schoolwork if any, occasionally play a session (generally if I didn't have time or there weren't any games in the afternoon), and then just hang out with my roommates or go out.  I can't stress enough how awesome having a pool table is.  Late night pool is awesome.

Grade: B-

2.  Get in better shape.

I'm very pleased with how this one is going.  In order to get some structure that would hopefully lead to more discipline, I signed up for a workout program on menshealth.com.  They have a personal trainer feature where you choose between 12 different workout plans and also 4 different diet plans if you want, although I've chosen to ignore the strict diet part but just make a conscious effort to eat pretty healthy.  I chose the At-Home Workout, which is perfect for me because it uses all dumbbells and I have dumbbells and all the necessary equipment to do the workouts in the confines of my own house.  From last summer to December I had lost about 15 lbs, mostly by eating well, but in the fall I probably worked out about 2x/week, which was better than before that, sadly.  So far this spring I've been working out probably about 4-5x a week.  I'm pretty great at never missing a workout during the week, but it's much harder on a Saturday when I wake up after drinking copious amounts at a party the night before.  I need to change this.  Otherwise, I think it's going great though.  My mom's cookies that she recently sent aren't helping because they're so delicious, but for the most part I'm great at avoiding junk food altogether and eating pretty healthy overall.  If anyone is interested I can post my workouts to see how effective they'd expect it to be, but I sure think it's doing the job since I almost feel nauseous toward the end of my weight workouts.  I have weights 3 days a week and cardio on almost every off day, usually somewhere from 30-45 minutes, which I've been doing on a stationary bike that I have.  The weight workout is a pretty comprehensive circuit workout featuring on big muscles (lots of legs and back) that has so far evolved from 1 set per exercise to do.  Again, if anyone is interested I can post more details.

Grade: A-

3.  Perform well in school.

This one is tough to quantify yet because I haven't had any tests.  However, I'm doing a great job to date on my main goal, which is to do better in my major classes.  I got a C+ last semester in my Microecon class, which was pretty disappointing although the instructor and book were both hard to learn from, and I felt that I could have worked harder and performed better.  So far in my Econometrics class this semester I've kept up with the material by reading all the chapters we've covered so far in the book, which is pretty unprecedented for me, and I did a very good job on the first 2 problem sets we've had.  In my other classes, I haven't worked quite as hard but there hasn't really been much due yet.  I'm not prioritizing them as much though.  I think I'm doing fine.

Grade: B+

4.  Improve my social life a bit.

This hasn't quite gone quite according to plan because I can't really go to the bars here, so often there is nothing to do.  My social life has mostly been just going to frat events, which isn't to say they're not fun.  However, a few of my other friends turned 21 and I went to dinner/parties with them, which was fun.  I've seen my freshman floor friends more than I did all last semester already I think, and that's a good thing.  Overall, I'm probably staying in a bit more than I'd like, but that might even be a good thing for now while I'm trying to balance so much.

Grade: B-

5.  Become a bit more of a bankroll nit.

Couldn't ask for more here.  I've played over 40k hands of 25/50 and 10/20 since I've gotten back to school on Jan 12.  I've played a very small number of 50/100 hands, which is acceptable since I've built my online roll back up some, and I've only played higher than 50/100 when I've had exactly 50/100 worth of my action.  This has most notably happened against Gus Hansen, whom I've played twice at 500/1k.  Unfortunately I didn't win either of those, but I plan on playing him again soon, with just a fraction of my action of course.  The 25/50 grinding has gone pretty well, I've been running a bit badly in 6max PLO in February but I'm about about 50k in a few small number of NL hands and crushing HU PLO.  I've also started to play the CAP PLO games more because there are often some big fish and it's rare to have 9 25/50 tables running otherwise so it's nice to be able to add those tables during a session to increase volume.  As an example last night I played 5 CAP tables while playing 2 HU tables, and although the CAP was frustrating and I took some nasty beats and lost 10k, I won 5k for the session.  Basically I feel like if I put volume in at 25/50 and play focused sessions, results will come, so I'm going to keep doing just that.  I've been very content just playing a lot of 25/50 and even 10/20 though and I expect this to continue for months, although once I build my online roll up some more I'll take some more shots at juicy big games.  But overall I intend to make 25/50 my main game for the foreseeable future.  Cole is a great role model for this, he obviously has the skills and bankroll to play nosebleeds semi-comfortably but rather than exposing himself to huge swings and tons of variance he chooses to just grind lower and make lots of money.  I intend to do the same.

Grade: A

That got pretty long, so I guess I'll hold up on other updates.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading!  It was definitely a good personal checkup to think about and write all that.

Happy new year everyone!  I had an amazing time last night, I rented out a party bus and a bunch of my friends and me went out to a few different bars in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area.  I cannot stress enough how much fun this was.  I will post pictures when I get some, some of the girls who came took lots of them thankfully.  I hope everyone else had a fun New Year's Eve as well!

Since my big win earlier this month I've been taking it pretty easy pokerwise for a few reasons.  Mainly, I've been really busy, I had finals then came home for one day before flying out to Chicago to go to a Bulls game and the CR Christmas Party with Taylor, Wiggins, and some other good friends.  Unlike the last time I went to Chicago in the winter, the weather held up really well (actually 10 degrees warmer there than in the northeast when I was there).  I had a great time and I'm really becoming fond of Chicago.  One big reason is that the people just seem friendlier, small sample size but I've heard others say this as well.  Also, another quick story that shows why I like it - I was leaving my hotel one day around noon to catch a cab and head to the CR office, but I decided I wanted a quick bite to eat first because I was hungry.  I asked the doorman at the hotel and he told me there was a great deli a block away.  I went to said deli, which was a small, family-owned Italian deli, and had one of the best subs I've ever had in my life.  I just think being able to do stuff like this is awesome, I realize it's not exclusive to Chicago but having never lived in a big city before I just think it's so cool.  Chicago is definitely an option for living after I graduate this coming December.

Since returning from Chicago I've been spending lots of time with friends and family.  I'm only in PA for a few months a year anymore so I'm trying to make the most of this time.  It's not that I haven't wanted to play poker, it just hasn't been a priority.  Similarly, I planned on catching up on Mad Men this break and have watched a grand total of zero episodes so far (I've previously seen S1).  I did watch the Hangover for the 4th time though, such a great movie.  I'd imagine I'll spend most of the remainder of my break spending time with friends and family as well since everyone is home and looking to hang out as much as possible.  I've also been hitting the gym pretty hard over break and I expect to keep that up as well.

Now to resolutions.  I did this last year and thought it would be a good idea to check up on my progress.  I'm going to do that first then make some new ones for 2010.  Without further ado....

2009 Resolutions

1.  Make more productive use of my time.

I think I've seen some improvement here.  I still waste a bit more time on 2+2 than I'd like but I've kicked the bad habit of lying in bed on my computer for an hour or 2 after waking up.  I certainly waste less time than most of my college friends lol

2.  Get in better shape.

Making progress here as well, at least in the past few months.  I was pretty good in the spring but Vegas really killed it as it's pretty impossible to live a healthy lifestyle while living in a big house in Vegas with 8 friends + friends of friends visiting constantly.  I want to try harder this coming summer though.  After Vegas I also slacked for a bit but since October I've been pretty consistent with my workouts and I've eaten reasonably healthy as well, especially over this break.  I've definitely seen some nice strength gains but I'd like to drop 15-20 pounds.

3.  Perform well in school.

Nailed this one.  I got a 3.55 this fall and I think a 3.3 in the spring.  Couldn't be happier with my schoolwork.

4.  Improve my social life a bit.

Aced this as well.  I've definitely improved the amount of meaningful relationships I have with friends over the past year, and I think the main reason is that I've really opened up.  I was pretty shy in high school but now I feel like a completely different person when I go out.  Sometimes I used to force it just to fit in, now I still don't always feel like going out and stay in sometimes, but when I do go out I genuinely have lots of fun almost always.  I am extremely happy with all of this.

5.  Become a bit more of a bankroll nit.

Believe it or not I think I did a great job of this.  For the first half of 2009 I pretty much grinded a bunch of 25/50, played a little bit of 500/1k pretty heavily pieced out, and put up pretty subpar results compared to what I would have liked.  Regardless, I stuck to my gameplan.  I was fortunate to have some nice scores staking in the WSOP and as a result had some money to play with, and at the same time there were some really good nosebleed games running on FTP, so I decided to put more money online and share action in these games.  I'm happy to say that it really couldn't have worked out any better and I'm very fortunate for that.

2010 Resolutions

1.  Get in better shape.

Still plenty of room for improvement here.  I've been getting very serious about this all around so far over break.  The local gym is super nice and has a basketball court that I've been shooting around on to warm up and cool down and on off-days from lifting.  I'm definitely going to start going to a gym back at school, I had been working out in my house but it's just so much easier to motivate myself to work out when I leave the house to go to a gym.  As stated above I'd like to lose 15-20 pounds.

2.  Learn how to cook well.

This ties in with #1 a bit as cooking myself means I can make my own meals and know what I'm putting in my food.  Also, in my limited experience I've made some meals that taste pretty damn good, although the credit really belongs to getting good ingredients.  I have a nice grill at my house and don't even know how to use it, my roommate does so it's not going to waste, but this is pretty stupid and I'm going to figure it out asap.  I also got a cookbook for Christmas that really starts from the ground up and I've already read a bunch of it.  I think cooking will be fun and rewarding and I'm looking forward to getting into it more.

3.  Continue to maintain/expand relationships with friends and family.

I've really become closer with some friends and family members in the past year and this really comes back to opening up more and becoming more outgoing as I discussed earlier.  Same goes with girls too.  I hope to maintain the close relationships I have, especially with good friends who are graduating and who I won't see as much.  Life's just better when experiences are shared with others, imo.

4.  Remain hungry at the poker tables and continue to put up good results.

This might be a bit tough as quite frankly I'm more concerned with other aspects of my life right now.  That said, I'm very much looking forward to the WSOP this summer as it will be my first full Series since turning 21.  I plan on playing the 50k 8-game event, the main event, 10k HU, 10k PLO, and perhaps a few more, as well as playing some big cash games.  I want to spend the first half of 2010 sharpening up my mixed games online so I can play them live this summer if good ones are running.  Money is nice too but my primary goal is just to get the mixed game as sharp as possible.  I plan on still playing a decent amount of PLO too but it's a secondary goal as I'm quite content with my PLO game.  I also look forward to playing HU if there are good spots, although I think my days of waiting around for 8 hours for action on HU tables are pretty much done, I rarely spend more than 3 hours at a time playing/looking for games anymore.

5.  Have fun!

I doubt I'll have a problem with this, but just putting it here to remind myself that this is what it's all about.  2009 was arguably the best, most enjoyable year of my life to date and I can only hope that 2010 is even better.

Wish me luck with these resolutions and happy new year again to all!

Brian