So I decided to upgrade my system under the pretense of helping with poker. This is what I went with:

EVGA x58 mobo
I7 920 2.6 ghz
OCZ triple channel 3gb
Intel X-25 SSD
Vigor Monsoon III LT heatsink

Already had:

Thermaltake toughpower 850w
EVGA 9800 GTX
Coolermaster CMStacker 830

Everything went pretty smooth. I have built a few systems over the years and usually there's some idiotic problem that takes hours to diagnose, but not this time. I just got through over clocking the thing up to 3.8 GHz with DDR1600 8/8/8/24 and it is smoking fast. That hard drive is only 80 GB but it is by far the fastest thing on the market and I don't have to listen to a hard drive scratching anymore, yay. I don't think I'm going to get the new GTX 295 vid card, games destroy my will to play poker and as much as I wasted on this PC I need to get back on the ball.

I didn't make a blog last night because it would have just been more of the same bland results, and it probably gets pretty boring to read the same stuff every time I make one. Today though we had some real drama. Started five tournaments today, got them all about 2 1/2 hours deep and then the wheels came off. In three of them I lost coin flips with TT all of them nearing the money bubble, in one of them I got to the final table bubble and lost QQ to JT(among others), so all I had left was the daily 80 grand on stars.

I have what may be a bad habit of trying to cash when my stack is pretty low and we're close. I really haven't seen a very in depth discussion on the math behind what I should be doing at that point, but when my M is 3 and we are 20 people from the money I generally will try to make it. I did that again today and ended up lucking into a hand in a limped pot that got me back up to having real fold equity and I just built on it.

I had really terrible table position the entire tournament. Either multiple chip leaders or multiple pros to my left, so I played pretty snug. With 23 people left I ended up taking down a huge pot that put me in first place. Some guy ended up calling me down with AK on a blank flop when I had TT . The same guy ended up stacking me when I raised QJo under the gun and the flop came QhThx , and he flat called my continuation Bet. The turn was a blank and I ended up over shoving and he called me with TT. I was crippled at that point but somehow manage to get back into it by getting lucky.

Fast forward to the final table bubble. I pick up 88 from middle position . raised on a five handed table and this super aggressive fairly good player shoved on me. We both had about 400,000 chips before the hand and there was 100,000 in the pot after my raise. This guy had been super aggressive with restealing and shoves and I made the hero call. He flips over a7o. On the turn he had two outs due to a flush draw I had but ended up spiking the ace and was basically tied for first while I ended up on the sidelines. $14,000 for first place, ouch.

since 7/31: -207

-Chris/heynow21

Today was a carbon copy of the last few, cashed a couple of tournaments but lost a few hundred dollars. I had actually written out a pretty good blog entry but somehow it got erased so I will simply give an update of my results, I don't have the energy to basically repeat what I had just written. Tomorrow I will break out the mind blowing insights and whatnot, promise.

Today: -290

SInce 7/31 -$440

-Chris/heynow21

Well another disappointing day in the books. My early session sucked, I cashed my cheapest tournament but couldn't take it home due to some bad luck. Evening session was very similar except I got slightly deep into the 11r on stars but it just turns into a turbo late and I didn't get lucky. Kind of disappointing because I really lucked out and got belowabove at my table and he must have blown $500 during the rebuy hour and I ended up with a top 20 stack at the break.

Today: -235

Since 7/31: -$150

-Chris/heynow21

So I played the bodog 100K and the Sunday million on stars and flamed out of both of them. The Sunday million was especially bad, I ended up calling a utg raise with QTo and stacking off on a TXX flop just because I had a note that the guy was a bad player.

I'm not a guy who chains together tournament after tournament and plays all day, I like to compartmentalize sessions. So when I play on Sunday, I usually end up only having two or three tournaments going when I get up and it messes with my head I think. I may even skip them altogether next week I'm not sure.

Anyway the total damage today was -482, I did end up cashing a couple of tournaments but definitely not a day worth remembering.

running total since 7/31 +$52

-Chris/heynow21

Today I added a couple of small rebuys to both my afternoon and evening session. I kind of vary between keeping them and dumping them, they are very easy tournaments but even with really bad opposition it's still pretty hard to make a good score especially when the first prize is only $700 or something. I figure in these tournaments my ROI over time should be over 100% but I have found that when I play seven tournaments it really does detract from my play as opposed to just five.

My goal in the six month challenge is a 70% ROI, which I feel is very doable. If I am spending roughly $400 a day in tournament fees then that should be around $10,000 a month, which of course would be about $60,000 at the end of six months. I actually think that I can hit 100% given the tournaments that I play but I don't want to set that as a goal and be disappointed at the end. I really feel that I am improving lately and expect my results to reflect that.

Having said all that today really sucked. I kept getting deep into tournaments with short stacks and losing 40%ers. I really can't even complain about that except I should've probably won a couple of them given how many there were. I think I cashed one out of like 13 tournaments and honestly I don't feel I really even played that well, which as I said earlier might be due to too many tournaments.

8/2 results: -320

Running total: +530

Today I played the same schedule -1 tournament. I ended up winning a bodog 4k for $1200. Misery as usual on full tilt, I got deep in the 9500 knockout but I lost AK vs AT to cripple me, I would have had a top three stack with a 22 people left. I have a real negative impression of full tilt due to the constant stream of bad luck I seem to get at the end of their tournaments. But anyway, I also final tabled one of those $22 180 mans and got seventh place and cashed something else and ended up today up $1124. That puts my running total after two days at +$835. Still can't find any easy graphing program to use, I think I'll try quicken.

Most importantly I played on schedule both sessions and played some pretty good poker. Over time that is the hard part.

The bright side is I made myself play even though I was pretty tired in the evening, but I only ended up cashing one out of 10 tournaments today for -$279. I played pretty well though by my standards so I am not too upset. Basically I play four deep field $55 tournaments a day, 1 $44, a $10.00 rebuy that usually ends up taking 50 from me, and the rest are 20 to 26 dollars. My one cash was about an 80th place finish in one of the 55's for about $110. I will look for a graph later tonight to help track the progress.

The reason I was so tired is because I had trouble sleeping last night due to the report of bodog getting its money seized. I have like $3000 in that site and when I woke up I initiated a cash out.. Only 40 business days!

-Chris/heynow21

I have resolved to start blogging. I don't really have a great deal to talk about, so I am going to issue myself to challenge publicly in order to pressure myself into accomplishing it while providing entertainment to any would be readers. The goal? Purchase a house within six months with nothing but tournament poker winnings, starting from scratch.

First a little bit of background. I started playing poker about four or five years ago. I ended up winning $25,000 one Sunday afternoon and it allowed me to play $1000 no limit on party poker. For a couple of months I was living the high life. I bought myself a car and moved out of my condo and into a rented house.

But then came the inevitable downswing. I wasn't a very good poker player, but set mining worked really well back in those days - for awhile. Soon I found myself in over my head against players that were advancing in skill while I stood still. Eventually I had to drop down, and then came a very rude awakening in the form of April 15; I hadn't saved anything for taxes.

So basically for two years I had a huge overdue tax bill while living in a rented house that was too big for me. I was treading water financially. My parents came to my rescue and offered to allow me to move back in rent free while I fixed my financial problems, and that's where I am now. Yes go ahead and laugh, I live with my parents.

I have paid off my tax bill and now have a healthy bankroll. But the lifestyle I live right now is pretty unhealthy for a grown man so I need to bear down and grind out a down payment on a house. Here are the details of my challenge:

For six months I will play two sessions a day of tournament poker, no exceptions. I'm pretty used to doing this but I often take breaks.

At the end of the six month period I will take whatever I have saved and use it as a 20% down payment on a house. I am pretty sure I can get a loan being a professional poker player due to my income tax records, but it may end up with me needing a 30% or more down payment. What ever happens I will be getting this house whether it be a piece of junk or a beautiful estate.

There will be no posts apologizing for my lack of updates. I will do this every single day without exception. Hopefully I will be able to provide a graph or something visual to keep it interesting.

At the end of the challenge I will take pictures of the house I get and detail any problems I had with a loan, since I know there are probably people out there who are interested in the same thing.

-Chris/heynow21