Shana and I leave tomorrow for Chicago. We will be staying at The Wit downtown and basically just chilling around meeting up with CR members and drinking a fair bit. We leave there on the 1st of October to Sacramento where we will be going to our friends wedding and hanging out with our family.

When we get back I will be looking to buy a wakeboarding boat. Either Mastercraft, Malibu, or Super Air Nautique

Mastercraft:

Its going to be tough to choose

So we did interviews of Personal Assistant's on Monday, and it pretty much took up the whole day. Out of the 80 some resumes sent my way, we set up 9 interviews but 2 people no showed/no called... bastards. Out of the 7 candidates there were some really good choices including a friend of ours who we have been kicking it with in SD for a while, but one woman stood out by a mile. It was ironic because she was the only person to not send me a resume, but instead she sent me a list of duties she does, and explains she is very experienced and still has other clients. Her list of duties basically exactly matched what I was looking for, which is really better than a resume of previous jobs where I may not completely understand all of their tasks. So today we told Dana the good news and we will be meeting tomorrow to get her started. I'm way stoked cuz she is just really a go to kinda person with anything, she bartends, and I plan to ask her to bartend at my party this Saturday,n she is a feng shui consultant and we are looking to buy more furniture, and she has tons of experience planning weddings. All these things combined with her concept of not just completing tasks but designing systems, or like directions, to completing the task easier the next time or for another person to complete, and the smoothness of our interview made it clear she was the choice for us. Sorry to everyone else who applied, there were alot of good candidates out there.

So this Saturday I am having a housewarming party at our new house. There is going to be food, tons of booze, and tons of drinking games. Also I think we will be hitting golf balls off our backyard into the canyon. Unfortunately this really cool patio set I bought (pic below) won't be there in time, but we should have like 3 beer game tables going, some loud music til 10, then some slightly less loud music from there on out :-P. If you are in the San Diego area and want to stop by you can email me at derric@cardrunners.com and I can give ya directions. Also you can check out my facebook event and I can add you to it that way.





Also I just went golfing today for the first time in 10 years. I literally got invited bought new clubs went to the course and didn't hit a single practice shot just started playing. I was horrible but it was fun. We went to Riverwalk which is only a few minutes away from my house and seemed like a really decent course. I was a little hung over from the night before and hadn't eaten much when I arrived, then I had a couple beers thinking it would cheer me up, instead I got more weazy around hole 10 and actually puked around the 17th hole. But I made a full recovery by the 18th hole, and had my best hole of the game, getting a 7 stroke on a par 3 or 4, which was way way better than any other time, some of which we couldnt finish because I was too slow. Overall it was alot of fun and somewhat different than any other activities I enjoy. I look forward to picking up the game and hustling poker players out of money in prop bets. I won $30 today, winning all 2 of my putting prop bets. I get tons better when small amounts of money are on the line.

Lots to talk about. I have been putting off making a blog post because of a very hectic move. I lost my camera for a while in the move and just recently found it, here are some pics of the new house in Clairemont. Shana and I are very excited to be moving here, we weren't able to buy, but the house is awesome and a really good price.


Welcome To My House





This is the front entrance to the house, nothing spectacular from the outside, which is probably why we got it for a reasonable price. The house is located in Clairemont just across from De Anza Cove, perfect for wakeboarding.



This is the view from the front of the house, you can just barely see the ocean.



More front yard



This is the front door, whats cool about it is there are little windows to the side that open and have a screen, this allows a really nice breeze to roll through the house. There is no AC (and always a breeze) so its pretty key.





The view of the entryway, there is a cool sunlike emblem in the hardwood at the bottom of the picture. To the right is a hallway and the dining room, to the left is a guest bedroom/converted garage.




This is the dining room, its still a bit messy as we are still moving in, there will be a nice table there eventually.



This is the guest bedroom, our old bedroom set is going in here, no windows, its kinda weird.






Here is the kitchen, its pretty sick having a fridge that matches the cabinets, lots of counter space too, subzero freezer.



The blurry, but usually nice view of the canyon from the kitchen.



A view of the family room from the kitchen, we are getting a new entertainment center soon.



The nook table and fireplace are to the right of the couch.




Another view of the family room.




Down the hallway a bit is my warzone. The 52" TV will go up to the left of the monitors on the wall, and I got a couch behind/under the camera shot.





This is the only bathroom in the house besides the master, its conveinently right next to my office so I can make those quick bathroom breaks.





This is the master. Here is our brand new temper pedic bed. We just got it and its really sweet.




its got a decent view from the window and off to the left of the shot is where the TV goes, we still need a dresser and nightstands.




Master bath jacuzzi tub




Master Closet, you have to go through the bathroom to get to it.




Shana's vanity, a real seller for us when deciding on a house. Now she doesn't have to clog up the bathroom with all her makeup and stuff.





This is a view from the top of our back yard, its a peaceful canyon. The trees block the golf course below us, which is where I will soon be losing piles of money playing horrible golf vs gordo and other degens.




Here you can see the lower yard which is awesome, thats a half court basketball court, with lights for beer pong/die, there is electricity down there and the noise just goes off into the canyon so it doesn't bother the neighbors too much.




Here is the left of the backyard, you can see the golf course a lil better.




This is the walkway down to the lower backyard.

Here is the upper backyard.

Just wanted to share the woe's of poker with you real fast.




I was at a REALLY REALLY good 25/50 game and the table fish coolered me with flopped straight to set, then I ran pretty bad at 5/10 and 10/20, but everything turned around once I got my head out my own butt and said, I can't be upset about losing money, I just need to play right and the money will come, and sure enough I swung back (unexpectedly). It was funny because I actually had to cooler the fish with AA to AK (he played it pretty bad got it in when he turned top pair of Kings) in order to win a buy in back. Sadly the fish left and I busted the Wednesday nightly after losing a HUGE 3 way allin with AA to KK and QQ for 5th in chips, I was near the bubble too :(

I kinda promimsed I wouldn't post too much negative stuff on my blog, and I'm not even sure if this counts since I miraculously came out of the red at the end, but anyways there is a quick update. I am on schedule to have a 60k month which would obviously be pretty huge.

Warning: Very Long Post

So I recently thought I would take on the task of learning how to setup and use an Xbox Controller to play poker with. The concept is sound, and I believe with time, it will be a better way to interface than mouse and keyboard. Today I will teach you how to get the same setup for a relatively cheap price, and some of the pro's and con's of using the Xbox Controller Setup vs using the generic mouse/keyboard setup.

Firstly right now, this setup only works with PokerStars. It may be possible to set it up with FTP, or both, right now, but I haven't attempted to do it yet. I will talk about how you could do that later.

The things you need:

Xbox controller (wired or wireless) - note: the usb charger cable does not count as turning a wireless controller into a wired controller $37.99
Xbox Controller drivers for PC - these are not included with the CD for the wireless receiver and I believe you need them to operate the controller, not entirely sure but I downloaded and installed them anyways.

If you have a wireless controller (recommended) you need:
Xbox Wireless receiver for PC - This connects the controller to the PC $48.99

Xpadder - this sets up hotkeys for the Xbox controller $9.99
Optional Xpadder Big File Pack - this will have some Pictures of controllers and profiles for games that may come in handy.

TableNinja - this program sets up hotkeys for poker actions $55.99

Now comes the tricky part. Once you get your wireless receiver and drivers installed, you need to click and hold the connection button on both the receiver and the controller (at the same time) to get them to connect to each other. Make sure your Xbox is off. I have had trouble on and off with this. Some times the controller will "connect" to the receiver but the lights around the X will all flash slowly. What needs to happen is the top left (player one spot) light needs to flash and hold on, that signals that the connection is solid. If you encounter connection problems, make sure you have drivers installed, restart the computer, try again, close all programs out, unplug all other wireless devices. If this doesn't work scream and shout and try again, it should work and its unlikely your wireless receiver isn't working properly, these things are touchy.

Once the xbox controller is connected, open up xpadder and there should be a screen up that has signaled xpadder has detected the connection, if there is a little searching type thing on the screen, then the connection has not been made or recognized. In xpadder you will need to make your first profile or you can upload mine. Doing it yourself may give you a better feel for the software and its not very hard, if you want to upload my controller profile click here. Once the controller profile is up you will need to start creating your own button layout profile. Or you can again copy from me. Even if you copy my profile you will need to know the correct hotkey combinations to input into tableninja, so you may be better off doing it yourself but following my profile as an example. To download my profile click here. Now take a look below, on the left is my xbox controller setup. The left analog stick controls mouse movement, then you can see some of the labeled buttons. This profile is by no means perfect, and I think everyone will have a different preference on how they want their controller set up. Some things that I absolutely recommend in your setup are: High speed mouse movement with an analog stick. Different size pot bets with the other analog stick, easy access left click button (you want actually need this to play a hand, but it comes in handy still ), I really like the triggers being +-BBs (I actually set it up for .2BBs so I can make more goofy/unique bets at the higher stakes games), must have a table forward/backward setup somewhere, obviously your bet, fold, and check buttons should be near each other, so abxy makes sense.

Now here is a really cool feature that I added and its not hard to do. I want the mouse to move at a relatively high speed so I can zoom across 2 monitors to highlight different tables rather fast (the table forward backwards buttons are a little annoying when going to a far away positioned table, the program pokershortcuts actually has a better solution with table up down left right, hopefully I can find a way to use that program or get it added to tableninja soon, anyways), but when I get to a highlighted table, my mouse is too touchy for unique control like say picking a seat or looking at a player note, or bringing up HEM stats (the yellow box). So what I did was I use the top left button (the one with a hair of blue at the bottom in the picture below) to switch "sets." While this button is held (Selects Set 2 while held option in Advanced/Set Selector) I move to a different profile setup essentially, where I can use the same buttons for different features. So with the mouse, I turned down the movement speed a ton so I zoom over to a table hold the button and movement slows a bit. I also brought over a lot of the important features like bet call fold left click etc, so that I can still make actions while in the slower movement speed. I found this very helpful. See the second picture for what the second "set" looks like. I also liked keeping poker playing and poker starting/stopping separate which is why I have the auto-post and sit out features on the second page.

• Comfort - the Xbox controller is designed for many hours of gameplay. Taking your arm off a mouse will reduce the stress accompanied with using a mouse. I know I have developed RSI, and it can be painful to use the mouse for hours on end. You can put the controller right in your lap and relax a little bit more than when you have to drag a mouse slightly to the left or right. Also you can move further away from the screen, while this could be true with any wireless keyboard/mouse setup, I found myself about a foot or two further back from the monitors and still tackling the work with ease.
• Speed - In the end, after you become familiarized with this setup, you should be able to make your actions much faster than you did before this setup.
• Control - The next active table allows you to jump to a table that awaits your decision. In the meanwhile you can move around to other tables with a forward backward selector, or use the mouse to move over any table, activating that table. Once at any table your suggested betsizes will pop up and you can create an action as soon as you have decided on which action to take (yes I am saying you save miliseconds because you dont have to move the mouse over to the button and click bet). This proves to keep you really involved in the games, its really intense when you are getting used to it.
• SNGs - this is the perfect setup for SNGs, it will increase your actions/minute by a ton and you can setup an ALLIN button that will become quite handy.

• Learning Curve - this is the big one. For a while you will need to move down in stakes to tweak out your controller until you are comfortable at your regular games. I have already misclicked a couple hundred dollars away, I recommend avoiding that situation. While all the buttons are in a compact area, its unlikely that you will bump into the wrong button, only that you will make an action for the wrong table, or as you are learning, get the buttons confused and mistake one button for another.
• Precision - I imagine if you spend more time with the controller, and getting used to the mouse setup, you will get better at precise mouse control, but until then you have to stumble to zero in your mouse on say the chat box or the little X in the corner of the screen. This turns out not to matter to much though because you can create shortcut buttons to replace "inefficient" mouse movements.
• Predetermined betsizing - If you don't watch yourself you may become robotic and just be throwing out predetermined bets, rather than adjusting your bet size based on the board texture game flow etc. In the end, if you aren't paying attention, you will lose the edge you can have by playing a well adjusted game. For the low stakes games, this will barely matter, but as you move up, or if you play a lot of headsup, you will just have to stop yourself from getting lazy with the predetermined bet sizes.
• Chat Off - This setup will encourage you to stop your mouse and keyboard usage all together (thats the goal right?) which means no AIM, no scrolling the internet, just good old fashioned poker. Obviously you can still AIM and scroll the internet but it is extremely goofy picking up and setting down the controller when the whole purpose of the controller is to eliminate the other movements.
• Processing Power - All these applications, combined with your HUD and hand importer will start to bog down any older PC, you must have a nice computer before thinking about starting this setup.
• Reliability - Also with more apps, comes more failing. TableNinja and Xpadder were both made by at home programmers, meaning they are both prone to a little bit of crashing. Also they need to be updated after many PokerStars updates, so it may be possible to have a downtime of Xbox controller usage. You may have to spend a day back on mouse/keyboard until TableNinja people update their software (they are pretty fast at it usually).
• No Full Tilt ? - I wasn't able to get it working with full tilt, but I know there is a way. I got poker shortcuts for free (its in beta) and it worked fine with pokerstars, but I could never get it to do bet sizing right with FTP. If you have FTP Shortcuts, you should be able to get it to work on FTP no problem, but if you run both FTP and Stars, you will need to get Poker Shortcuts working, or wait until TableNinja releases its dual site program. Either way this is a temporary problem that could probably be solved if I spent more time emailing pokershortcuts support.

I haven't had alot to update about recently. I have been playing a good bit of poker and trying to keep drinking to a minimum (that statement is getting old). Shana and I have been looking at wedding vendors and new places to live, between the two my mornings are gone, poker in the afternoon to evenings, then some dinner and thats about all. Kinda like the poker robot thread here. I am chillen with friends today just having a beer at a local bar, and all I can think to talk about is either how I am finding cool photographers, dj's, etc. that will work with me on my wedding, or how I have been looking for a new house to "settle down in." What it really reminds me of is the first 30 seconds of this movie.

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So I have been not drinking for a week and a half but obviously opened up this weekend cuz a lot of friends were in town. Saturday night we are having a few groups of friends over at my house to drink beer. I am in a prop bet with Tom to basically make people drink as much beer as possible for me to get ship shipped an ez 2 hundo. Late in the night I have had an uncountable amount of drinks and decide to boat race with 2 of my friends. They both are heavy drinkers but haven't been boat racing in a while. I was drunk and being cocky so I told them that I will boat race two beers and they can go as a team. I pwn them and soon after "apparently" reach my blackout stage. Its getting late in the night and Shana has passed out, I go downstairs to see that she is fast asleep in bed. Apparently I turn on the light in the room, wake her up, puke on her and the bed, WAVE to her, and run off upstairs or something. She was tired and basically just rolled away from the puke and kept sleeping. "Apparently" five minutes later I go back downstairs to check on Shana (like the first time to see what she was doing cuz I didn't remember the previous occurence), I turn on the light, wake Shana up, and start yelling at her because she puked all over the bed. She finally gets in a few words to let me know that I puked in the bed, and once I realize that she might be right, I run off upstairs. So now I have to have all my sheets cleaned, but I will be going back ON the wagon for a while again, I really enjoyed not being hungover and also not being so tired late at night after a drink or two with dinner.

So the newest season of Entourage just started and I have to remind you to start watching it. If you don't have HBO, get it! Its really funny, well written, and can relate to what happens when poker players make it big.

I wanted to post some short to medium term goals that I have been thinking about:

1) Play poker over 30 hours a week and save up for a house down payment
2) Make 2 videos a month for CR
3) Get Health insurance
4) Write a business plan
5) Find a loan and house

Accomplishing these goals would make me feel really good. In the next couple months the lease on our apartment expires and I don't want to move into some place for a year only to buy a house a year later, I really just want to be able to afford a house. There are definitely houses out there that I can afford even though getting a home loan is really tough, the question is how crappy of a house do I want to settle for before just waiting another year before buying. If I had saved instead of spent all the money I have accumulated in the last year and a half getting a house would be a really easy task (and I would prolly be playing 25/50).

This weekend I got Brystmar and Anuta in town, and my friends Nick, Jackie, and Phil are driving down as well. I took about a 1.5 week break from boozeahol but I will be back off the wagon for the weekend, and then probably take another decent break. We are actually practicing for a drinking game competition coming up in the middle of August, pic below, wish us luck. Party on!

I was playing the main event really well and for the first time since the beginning of the tournament I got moved to a really soft table. I had been going up and down with my chip stack when I raised the SB with a9o the BB called. When the flop a95 was dealt my fate was sealed. I cbet and he shoved allin for a 3x pot overbet putting me allin, I looked back at my cards and called pretty confidently only to be shown 55 and I lost my 110k stack at 1200/2400/300. I played the whole tournament really well so I am not too disappointed. The good news is I will make it back in San Diego in time to help Shana with her art show.

So I had a semi tough day 1 table at the main event. Jennifer Tilly and 3 other good pros were at my table. I was in a really tough spot because the big fish at the table was two to my left and the 2 aggressive 3bettors were to his left. So i would raise, fish would call, then someone would squeeze. So I played really tight the whole table, hopefully I get a really good table draw for day 2. Ironically one of the pros who was good but on the tighter side, will be 2 to my left in my next table. Something else that was interesting was that noone from my day 1 table busted. Same 9 people playing poker for 8 hours. Tilly played pretty good except for the last 2 hrs or so when she opened to 2.5x and called a 43bb shove with a9o, it was suicidal. I will be going into Day 2 with 26k which is 4k under the starting stack, so nothing special.

After making it to day 2 we promptly headed out to XS to have a pretty fun night at an upstairs cabana. We didn't spend too much, but I had said I wasn't going to get bottle service the rest of the summer, and I obviously broke my promise. Then yesterday we had a really fun time at Evan and Myth's and citizenwind's house. Their backyard is pretty cool, they had beer pong, a pool, a volleyball/badmitten court, a golf put and chipping area, and a tennis court. So we played some pong, Seannolan and I won both games we played. Then I jumped in the pool, lost a game of chess on a life size chess board, then won 300 prop betting in golf. All 3 of us betting had practically no golf experience and I ended up getting closest to our target at a whopping 20 feet out (its a 60-80 foot court so obv we suck). One of the wierdest things that happened at the party was I was just chillen with some people I have just met when a guy goes oh you live in San Diego, where at? I am like downtown. He says where at downtown? I go first and market. He goes, I live at first and market. He lives across the street from me lol. So obv I got his name and number and we will be kicking it in SD some time soon.

After the party we went to Little Buddha for some quick dinner then got ready to head out. A bunch of people were going to Tao but I was informed the table was already overcrowded, and I got a group of people together to do something else. We got a table at parasol down for a bit and chilled there watching a few of the shows they put on at the Wynn Waterfall. Then we got a table at Blush for about 13 of us and had a bunch of fun. Afterwards a few peeps started playing rather high stakes craps. Thats when I called it a night, a very successful night.

Im looking forward to the cardrunners party tonight, hope to see you all there.