CARDRUNNERS

Hi.  This blog will likely be painfully short and boring.  I had a few quick things I wanted to blog about and mostly I am just throwing this up because I feel I should.  It's been a few weeks since my last post and ever since my blogging hiatus in August I have resolved to be a more prolific blogger.  

-I've been on a bit of a bender the last week.  Monday Melissa and I went out for one of her friend's birthdays, then on Tuesday I went home to my parents' house in Schaumburg.  Some of my high school friends were back too so we managed to go out and have some fun Tuesday and Wednesday.  Thursday was Thanksgiving which was spent eating/drinking with the fam, and then on Friday and Saturday we went to the bars and a few parties.  I am feeling a bit drained right now, but it was a very fun week.  I can't remember the last time I went out 6 nights in a row, it's probably been 3 years since that happened.  Saying that reminds me of one of my college roommates who Junior year had a streak of going out to bars or apartments to drink 27 straight nights.

-Our company is renting a beach house in Ft. Lauderdale for the next 6 days.  Andrew, Brian, and I will be down there for the whole time, while some of the lead Stox and CR pros will join us for a few days each.  The goal is to plan out some 2009 objectives while also getting a chance to "get away" together and bond/hangout/etc.  Getting a bunch of great poker players in once place is also amazing as far as producing good content.  We have some good videos planned out that hopefully will go well.  If you have any ideas for videos or instructors you'd like to see team up for a video, please let me know.

-I'd like to do some leakfinder videos on some MSNL or HSNL heads-up play.  If you send me 1 hour of good 4 tabling footage at 2-4nl+ I will spend time analyzing youy play.  Keep in mind that I emphasized good footage -- make sure there are some interesting spots and that you don't just send a boring session.  If you want information on how to send this video in, please see Forums>Video Discussion for information on Leakfinder videos.

-The Illini are 6-0 somehow.  I can't wait to watch the Clemson/Illinois game on Tuesday.

-Thank you very much to everyone who sent me PM's and posted advice about grad school (and other) options.  I haven't had a chance to reply to everyone yet as the response was almost overwhelming.  I'm going to get to that while I'm in Ft. Lauderdale.  I don't really have an update yet as to what I am doing but I am still planning on applying to MBA programs for Fall 09.

-I am told our new blog network should be ready fairly soon.  I am looking forward to it, it is much needed!

Taylor

So it has been getting cold out in Chicago.  To make matters worse, the CardRunners office has been without heat since we moved in during the summer.  Obviously this has only recently become an issue.  Keep in mind that I am risking losing a few digits typing this blog post, that's how much I love you guys.  We've been having some management meetings this week and I haven't left the conference room because all of the extra body heat means it's a balmy 65 degrees in there.  My office, unfortunately, is a freezer.

Over the past week poker has been going pretty well.  I'm up about 75k on UB since the refunds hit, so that's nice.  I've never been very good at mult-siting for some reason, I prefer to play all of my action at once on one site as it's harder for me to mentally manage game-flow in shorthanded games on different sites for some reason.  I don't really know why that is, i think it wouldn't be an issue if I was playing mostly 6max+, but when playing in 3-4 handed games or less on multiple sites I find myself less sharp.  I played a brutal session of 3-6plo on FTP while multitabling on UB, I lost about 8 buy-ins to some guy while playing horribly.  I still came out ahead as I ran well at some 25-50nl games, but it's disappointing nonetheless.  I'd like to get back to playing some more poker as I've felt very sharp at NLHE lately.  We'll see if that happens.

Things have been pretty laid back lately.  The only other major thing I'm working on right now is deciding on grad school in 2009.  I've always been extremely fascinated with learning about business stuff, and the idea of more school actually interests me when the classes are teaching things I am interested in.  Some people with good MBA experience/connections have been informally giving me some advice, but if anyone with some good recommendations for schools or programs would like to PM me or leave a comment here I would really appreciate that.  I'm open to pretty much anywhere in the country or world, as I'm mostly just exploring the idea right now and would get serious about studying/applying over the Holidays.  Thanks!

-Taylor

Yesterday was a day I'll remember for the rest of my life, or least until I am old and senile.  It started off on November 4th with the election of our new President Elect Obama.  I have to be honest in that I was rooting for Obama but I think I'm a bit of a realist in that I don't think simply "change" in our President's office is going to fix our nation's problems like a lot of people seem to think.  However, I think it's a step in the right direction and there is something to be said about Obama's charisma and has ability to inspire a lot of Americans.  I hope I'm wrong but I think even if God himself was elected President our country is going to be in for some tough times for at least the next year or two, if not longer.  I've read a little bit lately about Japan's "lost decade" and I wonder if there isn't a chance we face something similar over here, although that's probably a little unlikely.

Anyway, I'm happy Obama won and cautiously optimistic about the USA's future.  I thought McCain gave a very thoughtful concession speech and even though it is just rhetoric it really did make me feel like he could have done a great job as President.

Ezra and Melissa came over at 8 oclock or so and we had a couple beers before grabbing a taxi over to Grant Park to check out the Obama rally.  We didn't have tickets so basically we had to head to the north end of the park where thousands of people congregated to hang out and watch the huge monitors they had setup.  I'd estimate we were at least a few football fields away from the main place where Obama was standing, but it was still a pretty awesome feeling to be that close to everything.  I've never seen Chicago so crowded, there were literally like 200,000+ people packed in shoulder to shoulder.

After listening to McCain and Obama's speeches, we trudged back to the train station and rode probably the most uncomfortable train ride I've ever had back to Lincoln Park.  It only took about 45 minutes from the end of the speech to get back home, so that was a relief (even though typically it would take 20 minutes).

Not too much of note happened until the midday on Nov 5th when I got an IM from Stinger saying UB refunds were out.  Much to my delight I had $191,000 deposited into my account that had been stolen from me from cheaters over the past few years.  Even though the money was rightfully mine, it's a pretty indescribeable feeling to be handed that much money when you aren't expecting it.  I've made similar amounts of money numerous times at the tables but it's never really felt like this.

I don't really have any plans for the money yet but I definitely owe Gaucho and Trambopoline a nice dinner.  I'll never forget when Gaucho first IM'd me almost a year ago saying he suspected there was a cheater on UB.  It's sort of an eye-opening feeling for me because I remember being overly skeptical to his claims, thinking that there's no way someone could have cheated me without me figuring out that something was up.  I guess the older I get the more I realize how much I really don't know about life.  Maybe that's something to take away from this, in fact.  It's almost as important to know what you don't know than it is to know a lot yourself.  That's something I've learned while working at CardRunners; you can't expect to be the expert on everything, sometimes your opinion just really doesn't matter.  You hire the best people you can and you trust them to make their own decisions within the framework that you have set for the company.  I could talk a lot about this but that's not really the point about this blog.

Anyway, I don't really know where to go from here.  I know I'll always remember November 4th/5th, 2008.

Taylor

I thought I would write a short note about this new promotion that we are running at CR.  I don't blog too much about CR stuff because it's my job and I prefer talking about life/random things rather than the stuff I do at work all day long.  CardRunners has taken a lot of heat over the past year because we "sold out" and took red pro deals from FTP.  Some of our competitors have reveled in playing the david vs. goliath card or even the "CR pros are over the hill, I'm hip and cool and better card," and that's fine, business is business and the strong will survive!  I like a little friendly competition, anyway.  However, even those who think we are money-grubbing freaks will have to enjoy this new promotion that we are running, thanks to our SPONSOR, Full Tilt Poker.

If you are a CardRunners or Stoxpoker member, all you have to do is sign up at www.trulyfreepokertraining.com and include your CR/Stox name, FTP id, and first preference of free training site.  Next, just play at FTP, and log in to your CR Dashboard to follow your progress.  Starting on Nov. 1, we'll track the FTP points you accumulate, and after you have 4,500+ points, your next month at CR will be comped!  Same goes for Stoxpoker, and it's only 2,500 points!  You don't have to spend your points, this won't come out of your Rakeback (MGR), and there are absolutely no strings attached!  If you fall short, say you earn 1,150 points, we'll credit you with one free week of CardRunners.  Same goes for 2,250 and 3,500 point increments.

Each month you can earn the next month's subscription dues simply by playing at Full Tilt Poker.  We've spent a lot of time working out the kinks on this one, so hopefully everything runs smoothly and people enjoy this promotion.  I can't guarantee that it will last forever, but the plan is to run it indefinitely and see how things go.  The more people that take advantage of this, the better chance that it will continue to run, so make sure to tell your friends :).

Tonight is Halloween, which is one of my favorite nights of the year.  I have decided to go as Rex Grossman.  I have a Grossman jersey, a clipboard, and a Gatorade cup.  I just need to get some shoulder pads and some eye black.  I hope I don't see Rex out tonight in Chicago because he'll probably kick my ass.

Taylor

I've blogged about this a few times before, but I've always been an extremely goal oriented person.  Since freshman year of college, I can recall three major financial goals I have set for myself.  I'm happy to say that as of today I have achieved two of them!  The third one is by far the most difficult and I've also revised it.

The three goals are:
-Own Illinois basketball season tickets (achieved today!  last row baby haha)
-Own a BMW by age 30 (achieved at age 22 when I graduated college)
-Retire completely by 40 years old

I have modified my goal about retiring because I don't think I want to truly retire until I am in my 60's or hopefully 70's.  I changed this goal for a few reasons.  First, I'm happy working.  It doesn't mean I need to be making tons of money for my whole life, but I like a challenge and for me that is usually met through some sort of job.  Also, as I've become older I've realized that there are more attainable things that I'll need to work longer and harder in order to get.  For example, I'd really like to have a beach house.  I never spent much time on the beach when I was younger, but after traveling a lot over the past few years I've realized how much I would love to have a home in Southern California or Florida during the cold Chicago winters.  This wouldn't be cheap to buy nor maintain, so I'll probably have to work a little bit longer than I originally planned.

I modified my third goal because I've thought a lot about my ideal future and what I hope it's like.  First, I've decided that I would like to have a large family someday.  Kids aren't cheap, that's for sure.  Obviously there are a ton of variables that determine how many children I would have, but I think I'd like to have 3+ kids.  As an aside, kids are freaking expensive so retiring by 40 is unlikely with a large family.  Thinking about this reminds me of my dad's gripes about how expensive kids are, to which I always retort "you didn't have to conceive me you know!"  I hope someday I have a kid that's as big of a smartass as I am.

Anyway, after thinking about that retiring goal I have modified it to:

-Save enough money to create an education fund for my children and future generations in my family.  I hope that I do get wealthy enough to pass money along to my kids someday, but I've decided here and now that I'm not going to be passing along money to my kids unless it's specifically for education.  I think most of the reason I am who I am today is because I learned how to work hard at a young age.  I also knew I wasn't going to be handed anything my whole life which is I think is equally as important.  Looking around at all of my poker friends, I really can't think of anyone who came from an extremely priviledged background.  You can say what you want about all of the spoiled internet poker stars, but by and large they have all worked incredibly hard to come from "nothing" to extreme wealth in a short period of time.  Anyway, I hope to have an educational fund for future generations of my family setup by the time I retire.  Add that to a beach house and financially I have my work cut out for me for the next 20 years!

I rambled a bit as usual here, I'm just really excited that I have Illinois basketball season tickets now.  Someone is going to have to pry these out of my cold dead body because I hope to be going to these games for the next 60+ years.

This past weekend I was in Las Vegas for the filming of Poker After Dark.  David, Cole and I were lucky enough to be invited to play a 6 handed 200-400nlhe 100 ante cash game with Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra, and Gabe Kaplan.  The Poker After Dark format is really cool in that you get to see every hand played, so you can really get a feeling for the gameflow and overall vibe of the match.  I can't give any specific details about the match so you'll have to watch the show to find out what happens, but I really think CR/Online poker fans will really like this one.  The poker that we played was unlike any TV cash game I've seen, it actually played a little bit more like an online game and there was definitely quite a bit of action going on.  I've attached a picture I found posted on an internet poker forum, you can see Myself, Cole, and David at the table.  I have no idea who took it.

Vegas was pretty low-key for me besides the taping of the show.  On Thursday Ezra and I ate at Yellowtail at the Bellagio.  In short, I was pretty disappointed here as the food was very expensive and I thought it was good but not great.  The house specials seemed gimmicky; they literally had a roll that had pop-rocks in it (popping crap or something).  I thought that "popping" was trendy for spicy or tasty, but in fact the rolls popped in your mouth.  It was not a pleasant surprise, although I must say I've never been a fan of my food exploding in my mouth so maybe I'm not the best judge of this roll.  All in all it was good food but it was just overpriced.  Long live Shintaro, the restaurant they closed to open up Yellowtail.

On Friday Ezra and I looked at condos from noon until 5.  It was a fairly tedious process and it was eye opening to say the least.  The Las Vegas condo market is just flooded with these luxury places that people can't afford.  In some complexes you are looking at $1,000/mo association dues on a $500,000 condo.  This is just outrageous as far as I'm concerned, even if you have a pool and a doorman.  We were thinking about buying a place for the company for when we travel to Las Vegas, but I still think it's probably more economical and much less of a hassle to just stay at hotels when we go to LV.

Friday night Andrew, his gf Julia, Ezra, Cole and I ate dinner at Isla at Treasure Island.  I have to say I really like this place.  It's not too fancy or expensive, has great Tequila/Margaritas, and is overall just a fun a setting to have a meal and drinks.  We had dinner and a few pitchers of margaritas and then a "tequilla godess" came around offering us a tequilla menu to take a shot of.  Much to the chagrin of the men at the table, Julia and I chose to infuse our shots with guava (the nectar of the gods).  As a short aside, I'm a huge fan of guava juice and I can't understand why it's impossible to find anywhere.  Probably something to do with the fact that it's not grown much in the US, I suppose.

After dinner we headed over to O'Shea's to play Beer Pong.  O'Shea's is definitely a sight to behold; its location is fantastic and it is close to many high-end Vegas properties.  However, it's like taking a time-warp back to freshman year of college as the whole place just reminds me of a big frat party.  We headed straight for the beer pong tables near the back.  Security guards roam the premises looking for people who are too drunk.  I asked one of the guards how they determine who is too drunk and he said anyone who is wobbling is "outta here."  (lol)  Cole and I beat some randoms and then we got beat by Andrew and Ezra.  At this point I started feeling really sick from a combination of eating/drinking too muc and being out late, so I grabbed a cab and went home.

Saturday Andrew and I played golf with a guy from Chicago we know, Jerry.  We were paired up with an older gentleman who was very nice but an extremely slow player.  The round took nearly 6 hours which was painfully long.  That being said, we played at the Wynn Golf Course which was insanely nice.  After playing golf 4+ days per week in high school, I've probably only played 10 times since I started college.  It was nice to get out there and after playing horribly on the front nine I put it together just a little bit on the back.

That night we had a CardRunners dinner at SW at the Wynn.  I decided to call it a night right after dinner and got a very good night of sleep before Poker After Dark.  The next morning I woke up, got a massage, and then watched football for a few hours while watching videotape of Doyle, Eli, and Gabe.  I felt like I had a pretty good idea of how they played going into the match, so that was a nice little advantage to have.

We headed over to the Golden Nugget at 2:00 for lunch.  Cole and I had this chicken panini that was actually unbelievably good.  I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but if you are at the Golden Nugget definitely check out the Italian place which is near the pool and get that sandwhich.  I should also mention that the Golden Nugget was far and away nicer than I thought it would be.  They underwent major renovations over the past few years and although it is located a bit off the strip, the facilities are really modernized.  The pool area has a cool waterslide that goes through a shark tank, poolside blackjack, and great places to sit and catch sun.  I sound like I'm being paid to promote the Golden Nugget or something, but I really was genuinely impressed with the place overall.  They did had a couple of casino hosts taking care of us as guests of Poker After Dark, which made Cole, Dave and I feel pretty cool :).

There are a few stories I can share about the show.  First, I had no idea that they put as much makeup on people on TV as they apparently do.  We were in "makeup" as they say in the biz for probably 20 minutes each.  Everyone in the studio seemed to wonder how old we were, as we probably looked even younger with makeup on and none of us look particularly old as it is.  I have a couple of funny pictures of David getting his makeup done but I don't have them with me so he may be lucky enough to avoid that public humiliation.

We did a couple of pre-show interviews and then went out there to take pictures.  Again, I didn't realize how much really goes into putting together a TV show, but it's a lot more in-depth and time consuming than you would think.  The show started soon after this and then honestly I just played poker and acted like myself, the way the studio is setup you sort of forget you are on TV when you are the table which was nice.  The last thing I wanted to do was come off like some jackass so I tried to just relax and be myself because typically I am not a jackass, at least I hope I'm not.

At the half way point we had a break and the producer ordered sushi for us.  On the way to the bathroom outside the studio David and I ran into some girls outside of the doors who were like "OH MY GOD, are you guys playing on Poker After Dark?"  We said, "Yea!"  They were like, "OMG are you guys famous?"  We told her "No!  We're actually just normal kids who happened to play a lot of poker."  They seemed pretty impressed by us (obv our CardRunners patches) so they asked to take some pictures with us and we happily agreed.  It was a really great feeling to meet people who were huge poker fans and it was nice to be able to chat with them for a few minutes.  We then headed back into the studio to go play the second half of the show.

After the show, we were all pretty tired but we did manage to get over to Body English for a few bottles.  This club was pretty rocking for a Sunday night and we probably had more than our fair share of drinks in celebration of our appearance on PAD.

That's all I've got for now.

Picture:

Taylor



 

I always enjoy using the phrase "cartoon character" to describe someone whose actions consistently deviate from social norms.  I'm trying to think of good examples, maybe like the guy who shows up drunk at a cocktail party and consistently argues the opposite political side of everyone else at the gathering.  Other examples include personalities like Charles Barkley or my personal favorite, Bobby Knight.  There are plenty of these people in the poker world, one that comes to mind is this guy we call Stevie Ballgame (what makes that funny is that I am unaware of any good reason why we call him that).  I love that guy, he won $500k in a tourney this summer and took a very sizeable portion of it out gambling/strip clubbing. Anyway, I am now officially a cartoon character:

I've been waiting a long time for these avatars.  I've played a bit the last couple of days and it is sort of weird to stare at your face on 5 different tables while you are playing.  I will say that it has encouraged me to use the different avatar emotions more often.  I'm not quite sure if that's a good thing, because when I catch a bad beat I want to put the angry face on, then I just start to get more pissed off looking at myself like that.  I think the avatar they did for me is pretty spot on, except I wish I had my hair shorter than it appears on here.

The last few days have been fairly unexciting.  Last night we pretty fun though as Melissa cooked for her roommates, guy friends, and me.  She loves to cook and I must say is damn good at it.  We all ate way too much food, which considering it was Mexican food, might not have been the best idea.  It was a funny scene post meal; 6 guys strewn across the couches watching the NLDS.

I didn't really blog about this weekend because I was busy ranting in my last post.  Thursday night I hung out with Ezra at his new apartment.  He's got a pretty nice 1 bedroom place in the Gold Coast.  The area is extremely quaint for the city and his apartment has a nice lake view as well as ample space to hang out in.  Ezra was done fasting for Yom Kippur, so being the good Jew-Friend I am I brought him a Lou Malnati's pizza and we hung out for a couple hours.  It was the first time in awhile I can remember just hanging out with someone without having the TV on in the background.  Very nice, indeed.

I came home and really couldn't sleep.  I don't know why, I think my mind has been racing lately due to a variety of reasons.  I'll get into some of those in more depth in some future blog posts, but mainly there are just a lot of personal, work, and economy related things going on now and I don't think I spend enough time actually reflecting on what is going on around me.  I think that because I am a pretty busy person I need to take some more time to actually sit down and think about what is going on.  It's crazy, because these last two years since I've been out of school have been an absolute blur.  If someone were to ask me what I did during these two years, I'd be hard pressed to say too much besides "worked, traveled, hung out with friends," when in reality I've consistently been jam packed with lots of stuff.

Writing about this sort of makes me think about when someone will come up to me and say something nice to me about being a young entrepreneur or having poker success.  When I sit down to think about things, i really have had some good successes.  I guess I just come to take them for granted because I've been fortunate to have them at a young age.  Overall I think reflecting on what's going on in life is something I need to improve on doing.  Otherwise things just blend together, which I think is fine for much of life but it sure would be nice to have as many vivid memories and emotions about my life as possible.

On Friday night, my roommates, a couple girls we know, and I went to the Seven Ten Lounge in Lincoln Park (www.sparetimechicago.com/index.php).  It's a short walk from our house and has half priced appetizers before 8pm on Friday.  Obviously we ordered 8 appetizers instead of getting a meal, which was probably mildly cheap but considering we racked up a $200+ tab while bowling seems reasonable.  The bar itself was pretty cool.  It is divided into three main sections.  On the far side of the bar is an eclectic pool lounge, complete with old couches and some dinner tables.  The middle area is just a bar with TV's and some standing area.  On the far end they have 8 bowling lanes, with a waitress that serves you drinks and a bar close by in case you are really thirsty.  The lanes themselves are very old fashioned.  It's basically a no-frills, old time Chicago environment.  In fact, you have to keep score for yourself as there is no electronic scoring.  This didn't really bother us too much because we were mostly playing a drinking game throughout the evening, not worrying too much about the game.

Afterwords we went over to Lakeview to meet up with our friend Jim and some girls he was with, including a few of my good friends from high school.  I had never been there before, but we went to SoPo, which I actually liked a lot. (http://www.sopochicago.com/)  The crowd almost seemed more Lincoln Park than Lakeview, which I guess shouldn't be very surprising.  All in all it was a fun time as a group of  8 or 9 of us just sat and bs'd at one of the tales for a couple of hours.

On Saturday I hung out with Melissa pretty much all day.  We caught a train and went to Millenium Park to check out the Wired Next Fest, which is basically a tent that has up and coming technology on display.  I feel a little nit picky saying this, but the whole production could have been run much better.  I was disappointed that some of the displays had bad to horrible descriptions of what their technology was or did.  It looked like the people who created the stuff (read: extremely smart science types) also developed the exhibits explaining the technology.  When there wasn't a guide around to explain what was happening, often times it was very hard to follow what was going on.  That being said, it was still an awesome display of American ingenuity.  Some cool highlights:

-protective body gear that feels like underarmour, but protects you in a collision.  my roommate was there and saw them put this fabric around someone's finger, smash it with a hammer, and he couldn't feel it.  crazy.

-printers that print ink that completely evaporates in 24 hours.  this way you don't have to waste paper on something that you will only need for one day.

-a game where you strap a headband around your head that measures brain activity.  you sit across the table from another player who has done the same thing.  the goal is to minimize your brain activity.  to measure the winner, there is a ball that sits between the two of you that is setup on a track.  whomever is able to minimize their brain activity more (ie no thinking, being nervous, etc.) causes the ball to move towards the other person.  it's kind of like a high tech staring match.  i OBVIOUSLY killed melissa in this game, although she claims it's because she was nervous from a crowd of 30 watching us, and that she has more brainpower to begin with so it's hard for her to tone it down.  i don't know how i feel about that.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for my weekend.  Saturday night I didn't do a whole lot, and Sunday was filled with football and some CR stuff.

Take it easy,
Taylor

This post was supposed to be talk about my last few days, which have been productive at work and fun on the weekend.  I wanted to address some stuff from my last blog post and it just started to piss me off so I kept writing about it.  If you care about my life stuff, don't read any further because this post really isn't about me.  Instead, it's about all of the stupid young Americans who are financially overextending themselves.

The first thing I should say is that although I know my last post came off like I was relishing in Ezra's pain from the recent results of our stock market, it's really not like that.  The source of that post is the fact that I always try to stay positive in everything that I do.  I find constant worrying or negativity to be counterproductive and if there's nothing I can do about a situation, I'll do whatever I can to poke humor at even some of the most difficult times.  In this case, maybe it is a defense mechanism because I am actually scared that this crisis will result in the world as we know it changing.  This would almost certainly be a bad thing for me as I have to say I have it very good right now.  At any rate, I am genuinely worried about the future of our country, but I refuse to let myself get stressed out about it.  So I guess my seemingly flippant attitude may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but in reality I am in the same position as everyone else: entirely dependent on our world leader's abilities to effectively manage this crisis. 

I want to be clear that managing this crisis doesn't necessarily mean bailing everything out.  We, as a people, need to feel some pain.  I want this pain to be as thorough and as long lasting as necessary so that the backlog of financial issues can unwind and we can move forward, economically speaking.

 America has an addiction to spending money.  Seriously, it's absolutely pathetic.  I'm not saying I'm completely without fault because that's not the case.  I drive a nice car, I hardly ever cook my own food, I take multiple vacations per year.  I could without question be a much more frugal person.  But I spend probably 10-20% of my annual income per year, the rest is stored away ensuring my future will be prosperous (are there any gaurantees anymore???).  I am sick and tired of people I know making completely irrational financial decisions.  Just writing about this really pisses me off.  I can't even count the amount of the people that I know  who carry an irresponsible level of debt.  I'm not talking about post-grads who owe 30k in loans or something.  This is normal and very acceptable.  I talking about people who max out multiple credit cards so they can live the baller lifestyle they see on some shitty hip hop music video.  It's fucking pathetic, it really is.  Just because Diddy makes it rain at the club doesn't mean you can.

  I know people who have collected unemployment for months without even looking for a job, all while joking about how awesome it was not to have to do anything all day.  I'm not talking about unskilled or incompetent people, I'm talking about smart, college graduates who are capable of doing great things in the world.  I'm also not talking about taking a few weeks, even a month off a job search after a tough layoff or something.  I'm talking about the attitude that many young people have, seemingly thinking they for some reason deserve to live a fancy lifestyle when they can hardly even pay their rent.  You know what?  You are supposed to be broke in your 20s.  That's how it works.  You graduate college with some debt, you live frugally for 5 or 10 years while you pay it down and your salary increases, then you have some money for when you want to buy a house and start a family.  You're not supposed to graduate and immediately start buying bottles at the club every weekend.

The biggest thing that pisses me off about all of this is that people somehow feel they are entitled to these things.  It's almost as if they think "This is America, the greatest and richest country in the world, why shouldn't I be able to lease a new BMW at 24?"  Or "I've worked so hard for (gasp) the last FOUR YEARS in school, why shouldn't I only wear Seven jeans?"  I hate ranting and getting worked about stuff in general, but this stuff has just got to stop.  I was telling my roommates that the new "baller" lifestyle should become "anti-baller," or saving money and being thrifty will be en vogue.  I assume this is how it was post-Great Depression, but it'd truly be funny to see rap guys rapping about clipping coupons or shopping at Walmart.  I think I might have just smiled, damnit, I'm supposed to be pissed off.  But seriously, what do these people think about when they spend money they don't have?  What happens if they get sick and can't work for awhile?  What happens if they knock their gf up and have to support a baby?

I will close by saying that I am going to make a concerted effort to live a more responsible lifestyle.  It might only be to make myself feel more at ease with the growing economic uncertainty, or it might be that I'm just getting old.  Who knows, maybe doing so will set a good example for some of my friends who have lost touch with financial reality.  I don't know, I might be kidding myself to think that they will actually notice or care.  What I do hope is that maybe someone reading this blog will take some time to think about their finances and might use my rant to make some positive changes on their lifestyle.

Taylor

Funny story, and I'm not even making this up.  One of my girlfriend's friends, who clearly is a complete idiot, actually bought a baby bobcat on the internet.  I'm sure it wasn't cheap, nor was feeding it whatever the hell bobcats eat.  But apparently the thing eventually grew up (shocker) and started to become too rough for domestic life.  I guess it started stealing food off the table and was scratching its owner constantly.  Eventually the kid "accidentally" left the door open, and the bobcat was never seen again.  This story is shockingly reminiscent of Americans who took out some stupid mortgage on a property they couldn't afford, had their adjustable interest rates kick in, realized they couldn't pay their mortage, and walked.  Sad, really.

Edit:  I should have used this blog as a time to introduce an intersting idea that a friend of a friend had.  The website is called: TheCardboardTree.com.  It's made to be a substitute for a christmas tree.  It's $20, made of recycled cardboard, and can easily be painted or decorated.  If you are busto this holiday season, or feel like teaching your kids that cutting down a tree might not be environmentally conscious, you might check this website out.  www.TheCardBoardTree.com

Funny story.  Ezra, our Director of Marketing, is always freaking out about stuff.  He freaks out about pretty much everything in life, but losing money sets him off like almost nothing else.  Obviously he has been getting absolutely killed in the stock market over the past year, just like most everyone else.  Lately I have taken a lot of pride in "predicting*" this downswing, so pretty much every day when the market loses X I sent him a Gchat or walk into his office and tell him how broke he is.  Today he hadn't followed the market at all, so at lunch, I made sure to inform him that the market was down 400 points.  The look on his face was hilarious; he was hating life for sure.  When we got back to the office I loaded up the financial headlines and was surprised to see: Dow Down 600 points for the day!

Obviously it was time to call Ezra into my office to explain to him that the Dow lost 200 points while we were eating.  Hey, at least he got a free lunch though, right?  What a great company, I digress.  At this point he was flipping out telling me how this is NOT FUNNY.  I told him he should relax and that everything would be fine.  At this point he left to go back into his office and get back to work.  

Not one minute later my headline changed to "Dow Down 700 Points," it had actually lost 100 points while I was explaining to him that it lost 200 points at lunch.  Obviously I walked over to his office and said "Ezra, I just wanted to let you know that while I was explaining to you that the Dow lost 200 points at lunch, the Dow lost 100 points."

Unfortunately, in my twisted mind anyway, the market rebounded and only finished down 400 points or so.  Still, I thought this was a funny exchange.

Taylor

*About 1 year ago, when faced with the decision of investing a large chunk of my money in the market or leaving it on the sidelines, I chose to hold onto the cash.  I'd be lying if I said I predicted what has actually happened, or lying if I said that even if I predicted it it was in any way some sort of skillful judgement, but for a variety of reason that I won't go into here I thought the smart move was to hold on to some meaningful percentage of my cash.  I told a bunch of people this and pretty much universally I was told this was the wrong decision.  As I said, I'm not going to go into my entire rationale here but I will say one thing: I think many high stakes poker players would be wise to take on less risk than would appear appropriate because of the nature of our profession.  Most high stakes have a necessity for large amounts of cash needed on hand for live games, tournaments, deposits, etc.  Also, if the difference between being optimally invested and taking lesk risk is a few points per year, the reduced variance in the market (especially in times like these) may be worth sacrificing some expected gains.  In a few years when this hypothetical high stakes player has built up a few million dollars to put into the market, then it may make some sense to start to spend more time managing your money and less time playing poker.  If you've toned down your poker playing, day to day swings in your portfolio won't have a large impact on your abillity to play your best.  I guess what it boils down to is that I think poker players underrate how important it is to stay in top mental shape in order to achieve their best results.  Almost anything you can do to improve your average mental state is worth doing.

So I met Mahatma for the first time ever.  It's crazy because I've played so many hands vs. him but never met him in real life, which is pretty rare considering we are both professional players.  We both don't seem to travel too much so I guess it shouldn't be surprising, but for some reason it was.

The encounter was pretty funny so I'll describe it here.  It was day 2 of the tournament after the second break in play.  We were about halfway through the 5 level day, and my chipstack was decent and I was feeling pretty good about my chances.  I had just finished using the bathroom and was washing my hands at the sink.  I looked in the mirror and I saw what I thought looked like Prahlad using one of the urinals.  He had longer hair and definitely looked more surfer-ish than I remembered, so I kind of gave him a double take, which isn't something I usually do for a guy using a urinal.

Anyway, I realize it is him then look away.  I've never introduced myself to someone while they were urinating and I wasn't about to start now.  All the sudden, I hear, "Greeeeen Plastic!"  I was thinking, OMG, he knows it's me!  I really had no idea if he knew anything about me beyond that I was in college at Illinois when we were playing a lot.  I said "Ha, I never thought we would meet in a bathroom."  He said "Right on, how are you doing?  How is your stack?"  I told him that I was doing fine and that I had an average stack or so.  I was walking out of the bathroom at this point so I told him it was good to meet him and I'd catch up with him later.  Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate busting out of the tournament that afternoon for a variety of reasons, so I figured I would just catch him at the end of the day when everyone was counting up their chips.  Sadly, I busted out of the tournament about 3 hours later, and I wasn't able to shoot the shit with him, as I've been wanting to do for like 3 years now.  Hopefully he'll see this blog somehow, it'd be nice to talk to the guy.  For what it's worth, he seemed really friendly and some of my friends that have played with him say he couldn't be a nicer guy. 

The rest of the tournament was pretty blah.  I drew a decent table, I had Michael Binger to my left the whole day and then 2-3 decent players and 3-4 average or below average players.  The problem was that we had no really big stacks at the table, so I couldn't really get very many chips.  I started out at 22k, and worked my stack up to 35k with only seeing one showdown.  I raised just a little bit more than average, and people really seemed to be giving me lots of respect.

At the beginning of the 500-1k level, a kid who had been opening a lot of pots and just grinding his stack down by being way too active shoved in for his last 15k when it was folded to him on the cutoff.  I looked down at AQ in the SB and snap called.  He tabled 66, which was better than I was expecting, and we were racing.  The board ran out ridiculous for me, something like 9TJx with 3 diamonds, so all i needed was paint, and 8, or a diamond to win, but no luck!  Back down to 20k.

I grinded my stack back up to 31k or so, then picked up QQ in MP.  A guy from Chicago, who actually lives a 5 minute walk from my condo, opens to 2800, i reraise to 8200, and he ships in his stack.  I snap call, as I'm not laying down queens when I have 30 bb's anyway, but I had been 3-betting the hell out of this guy and I was expecting a move like this with pretty much anything decent.  He flipped over AKcc and flopped a flush draw, then nailed a K on the turn and I was out.  Sad.

Overall the trip was a blast.  We met some really cool people, both poker industry types, random poker players, and also just people there on vacation.  The thing I'll really miss about poker someday is all the fun travel and people you get to meet.  What I won't miss is the misery the freaking Cubs cause me every year in Aruba when I am watching them at hotel bar.  Un freaking believable.  We watched the game this year with mostly the same group of people as last year, and it was the same damn result.  Cubs getting blown out.  It's just unbelievable how poorly we have done in the playoffs the past two years.  Especially this year.

I hope you guys enjoy your weekend.  Also thanks to the guy from Chicago who told me that my blog is the only blog from an internet poker player that doesn't make him want to gouge his eyes out (or something like that).  I wish I was better with names (i'm working on it) or I would give you a shout here.  Thanks for padding this ego!!!

Taylor

Oh I almost forgot.  I got to meet Stevesbets in Aruba.  Ha ha, what a character.  He's pretty much exactly like I thought he would be, which was awesome.  He and Stinger were at the same table on Day 1 of the tournament, until Stinger bluffed off all of his chips to Steves.  Good times.