I've just come to the end of two busy weeks in college. I decided I would quit poker for the month of February and quit swamping until St. Patricks day so I would have more spare time for school work. Well I finished my latest essay at about 4pm today and man does it feel sweet to be on the other side of this looking back.

Friday Feeling

Getting through a big bunch of exams or assignments is usually an anti-climax. This is probably because you're often so exhausted and burned out by the end of it that you don't want to meet friends, go out drinking or do anything. Well I certainly felt a bit different today. I woke up this morning and the sun was shining right in through my window. I had about 1500 words of an essay to do and rather than stay at home and face the temptation of firing up a few tables and raking myself to death vs the 25nl fgators I decided to leave the house, run into college and enjoy the sun shine while it lasted. I pieced together a nice summery ensemble, including some long shorts that I would predictably regret, and headed off with my laptop. I blitzed the essay over about 4 hours, spent in the lab and out, mailed the essay to my mother to proof read and then went to meet a friend for coffee at a new coffee place I recently discovered nearby.

After half an hour I text my mam asking her if she read the essay, to which she replied 'yes. it's fine'. I asked her if she could point out any spots where it could be improved (might sound lazy but I bounce everything off her, it's how I work) to which she replied 'Is salmon ok for dinner tonight'. Terrific, my schedule just got cleared of any editing I should have been doing, and I love Salmon.

My Evening
I spent the next couple of hours with my friend who I hadn't seen in god knows how long, perhaps 3 years, and we had a really good laugh. We hung out in the coffee shop swapping stories until closing, and then took a mini walking tour of Dublin running errands. Having a really fun mutual time with a person is an uplifting feeling that can't be reproduced or fabricated, and it often happens when good friends come together after a lengthy hiatus (although 3 years might seem like a relatively short stretch to not see someone for any of the dinosaurs reading this).

I hopped on a train home and whipped out the old laptop to try to bang out a blog for tonight (this was originally a strat article about bluffing the turn lololol) and got so lost that I flew right by my stop. No panic, happens all the time. I was stuck in an abandoned train station a town down for 2 hours in the pitch dark, freezing cold, march night. It was frustrating cos I need to get home and pack, I was due in the airport about 6 hours from then and I hadn't even dug out my favourite bikini (pics2cum).

Mystery Tour
So right now its 2am and I got a taxi booked in about 1.5 hours time to wizz me off on the first leg of my journey to.. where ever I'm going! As I tried to explain to GC on skype last night (he's a fish with the whole travel thing, but he got it in the end) I've a class trip away to a mystery destination this weekend. I went on it last year (to frankfurt) and the class had one the year before (to fucking bruges - see the film!) and they're always a big hit. We've spend every spare minute of the last two weeks trying to narrow down our destination looking at flight times, prices, clues given by the committee and now, 3 hours before my flight, I haven't a clue where I'm going. You can expect a full trip report and hopefully some decent pics upon my arrival. Two blogs in one week, not too bad!!

Pokers
So I guess when I'm home on monday the grind starts back again. I don't have a ton to say here, except that I've been playing a ton of new formats for fun recently without having to grind 6max. I played some HU sitngo's, some cheap and some well outside my bankroll, and some 10nl PLO for fun the last month or so. PLO is a really fun game and even from the tiny amount I know about it, I can see the micro games are just laughably bad compared to the nlhe equivalent. The HU sitngos have been a lot of fun, I'm probably up a small amount after like 30 games or something, I feel like I learned such a huge amount of these games though and even got to experience a little big of history building in that environment when I rematched a guy for 5 games. I've always wanted to play some HU and was right about to dive into some 50nl action right before Howard Lederer decided he wanted to buy a new yacht.

Vegas house
I nearly forgot, since my last blog we have arranged a new, much bigger place in Vegas. Myself gc bk and kainer had a solid laugh on skype the other night and it got me excited for it all over again. Pics of the new place below - check out the sweet bar!!

Hmmm cr pics seem to be broke - check back in!

Add me on Twitter if you're interested in my cash game adventures ni Vegas this summer

https://twitter.com/#!/CrashoutCassius


So, yeah, hope everyone else is having one of them good days.

Crash

Hey guys,

So I've been fairly busy the last week or two with stuff in school, and I'm likely to be busy for another month or so, so I figured I should bang out this blog now.

One more year at CardRunners
First of all, just wanna put it out there that I've just paid another year subs to CardRunners, so I'm around until January 2013 at least! I'm excited as always for another year here and grateful for everything Jeff, Alex and the rest of the boyos do here, coaches included.

Vegas
So I suppose the biggest news is that I booked a house in Vegas this summer with 5 other cardrunners, GarethChantler, Iseedeadmoney, BK, Kainer and Kaizan. I don't know any of these guys that well, and I don't know kaizan at all, but they all seem to be solid guys and a lot of fun. My plan is to get a decent roll together and head there and play 200nl in the casinos for a living. It's very doable, but it would certainly help if Full Tilt would pay me out my bit that I had stuck on there...

We booked a pretty huge house there so visitors are welcome if we know you from the swamp, if you're there to grind some events and you're willing to chip in for rent and petrol and such. Hopefully we got SkinnyB, wiggy, Rail, TW, Incantus and some other boys showing their face. So yeah, pm me or tweet me for more details. Obv there has to be a cap somewhere but I defo wanna meet up with as many swampers as I can this summer. Excited to meet up with one man bankroll-wrecker TheWillOfD too, hope my modest roll can survive a visit from him.

Some pics of the place below.









Gonna for sure try to sell some action and maybe play a 1k hold'em, if anyones super interested reading this in buying 5% of me in a 1k hold'em event then get at me on twitter or something... I realise it's not very likely as I've no tournament credentials, only cash... But I'm cool and will sell it at 1:1. More to come on this subject hopefully.

Props
Put up a pretty sick prop with Thewillofd tonight where we both got the '100 push up' app for our phones and gonna kick it into gear in the next month or so. First person to get to 100 consecutive push ups win. I previously thought this would be impossible, and I'm fairly heavy, but gonna give it a bash cos it would be a decent brag if I could do it, and also there's pride at stake, not to mention the loser buys a fancy meal in Vegas. Hopefully this doesn't end up in a dislocated shoulder anyway... wish me luck! If we put up any more huge (,huge) bets then I'll keep the blog updated.



Pokers
Not a ton to say on the poker front. Been putting up a bit of volume since the new year, but it's been super swingy and frustrating. Least the hands I'm putting in are getting me somewhere with the bonuses. I'm playing 4 tabs at the moment and trying to just improve in some spots where I've been playing way too passive. Over summer I dropped from 100nl rush to 10nl ring and the games play very different, but I think I overcompensated and I'm only now really finding the spots where I can be aggro pre and post at these levels. My red line which was very healthy breakeven at 100nl is a line straight to hell now, where as my blue line is obviously a huge part of my winnings. Rake at 10nl is frustratingly high but my winrate isn't what it should be due to auto pilot so I can't blame the rake. Still on track to make silver this month on stars anyway which is fine given that I don't have a ton of time to play. Update and graph to come. Main goal is to get a bunch better at crushing the fishies and iron out some new lines as I've been not nearly creative enough recently. I think I will talk a bit more strategy in my next blog for sure.

My live poker face
So I really think I need to work on my live poker face, I had a 7 hour coaching session over skype with Gareth Chantler earlier where we both just stared at each for the duration. It was intense but I really think I got something out of it. If anyone else is interested in doing a live poker face sweat in the next couple of weeks just let me know, I could use the practice.

That's all for now guys.

Hope everyones running good, at the tables and in life

Crash

New Year Blog

2011

2011 was a memorable year. From being very, very busy in January with college, to online pokers implosion in April, to moving to Chicago in June, to dealing with a break up in September, to rebuilding my life in Dublin in the subsequent months, it's been full of moments and revelations that I'm unlikely to ever forget.

Poker : Changes in 2011

Since early 2010 I've played poker as my main source of income. I pretty much make money no other way. Poker consumed my life for a long period. For about a 10 month period I posted in every single thread in the micro stakes forum. I watched every single video released on CardRunners that pertained to hold'em. I also watched a huge amount of the PLO vids, and even some of the limit vids, although I still don't see the allure of betting the minimum. I have read pretty much every mainstream poker book on the market up until the last six months, and recently some of the new ones too (the mental game of poker is a huge book). I used to read these books every night before I went to sleep, read them over and over. I also played poker every single night without fail. I would stay up until 7am trying to get unstuck, just like the old clich©.

At some point rush poker came along on Full Tilt and I spotted my niche, a new game with new strategies that people were just starting to think about. The rush forum was opened on CR and I remember Taylor posted a thread for specific rush strategies. I remember CitizenWind made his first rush video and said he had been beating the 50nl games at 8bb clip over 700k hands, that strong a winrate and that amount of volume made possible by the uniqueness of the game.

In a period of about a year I moved up from 25nl to 100nl, cashing out several thousand euros along the way. I ran super hot for the month of November I believe and won about 2000$ at 50nl. I remember going into December on one of the biggest highs of my life. DannyRed posted on the Rush forum saying that rush week was coming up, if you logged some volume you got a free 200$ or something. I will hold this against Danny forever. I remember going for it and playing about 7 hours on the Monday of that week, lost 1000$ in a day and was so shell shocked I didn't even make the minimum requirement for the bronze bonus for rush week. All my confidence was blown away in just one day, the poker gods are fickle. Back to the drawing board.

15th of April 2010 is going to be a date forever emblazoned in my mind. Black Friday was earth shattering for poker players all throughout the land, but to everyone else in my life it was just another day. It didn't immediately register with me of course how disastrous it was going to be, I could still play poker I just wasn't temporarily allowed to withdraw? Not the end of the world. By early June I was down my entire bankroll and also my main game. I was moving to American June 4th, where Stars had just withdrawn from even if I had any bankroll, so poker left my life. I figured things would be sorted by September and 3 months out of the game wouldn't hurt too badly.

It's January 2nd now. I have a few hundred in my poker stars account but my volume has been incredibly low. Starting again has been harder than I could ever have imagined. My passion for learning the game has faded just as much as my desire to play hands. Tri Nuygen said in the Poker Blueprint that 'there will be a day that you're learning curve slows down dramatically' as an argument for aggressive bankroll management. Well he was certainly right.

2012 is a new year though. This is a poker blog and I'll damned if there is as much emo, brian hastings-esque rambling this time next year as there is right now!! New Year's resolutions RIGHT HERE: rebuild my roll!!! Have to start somewhere and I'm starting here! Hopefully by May I will be back playing 50nl and doing what I do. Also, hopefully at that point, Gareth Chantler will be playing far higher and out of my games... please god.

Other Business

Much has been said about my personal life in this blog in the course of this year. I also have a huge blog complete with photos about my summer so that doesn't need recap here. 2011 was a memorable year, and a tough year, but also a happy year. I pulled some results out of the hat in college, I made things work abroad for a few months and got to live with some of my best friends, and I made some new friends. Poker wise, I'm very happy to have to got to know TheWillOfD much better in real life, I like having the skype chats with Kainer, SkinnyB, Railm and Gareth Chantler, I got to meet up with Epdog in July and Alex Huang aka Nomo4Life aka the Asian persuasion. I got Zimba in on Fantasy Football and have gotten to know him a bit better through that. It's nice to broaden the horizons in such a manner. The GCAS has come and gone and it's the sandtiger age now... sandtiger always recycles. I'm looking forward to another year at Card Runners and getting to meet some poker people, hopefully most of them no limit players though: I just don't seem to get along with the limit guys very well... you know who you are.



Goals for the year

- Finish out my final year of college, my exams are in may

- Get 80k hands in by may - very doable target

- Get out to Vegas this summer and skinny dip in Jeff218's pool

-Be less fat

- Make some arrangements for next year - more to come on this matter, but I've effectively decided I don't much want to start a career in a big four accounting firm at the age of 22, I would like to do something else for at least one year

- Mac on Polish girls with my faithful sidekick TheWillOfD

- Start climbing the ranks in the Card Runners fantasy football league

- Convince Taylor via sporadic tweets that Draft Day need to move into the English football market, and that Zimba and I are the perfect men to take it there

- Learn some cool card tricks that entertain children -> single moms + card tricks = profit

- Stay happy

Hope everyone runs good for 2012, in poker and in life

Chris

Hey Guys,

So I haven't blogged in a few months. To be honest that's because I've been doing nothing. Well, nothing that really relates to poker.

Life

I've been keeping up in college ok and on a personal level just grinding the day to day and staying happy. Staying happy is a pretty easy thing to do day to day when your life is planned out for you. I get up every day and if I want to go to college I do, I talk to my friends and sometimes go out for a drink or whatever. On the weekends I'm still trying to work out what to do, I see my friends sometimes, I always seems to be up to date with the latest films in the cinema but I also always seem to be in a Saturday night doing nothing. Makes me wonder what other people do on a Saturday night? Maybe I need to start watching x-factor.

Anyway, I need to make this blog about something. A month ago was my 22nd birthday and I went on a class trip up to Belfast. For anyone who doesn't know, Belfast is up the north of Ireland, and Dublin is in the south. About 20 years ago, young upstanding gentlemen such as myself, gentlemen who don't have the stomach for violence nor the misguided sense of patriotism to plant bombs in civilians cars because their government answers to a government who once paid the wage of a man who shot their grandfathers best friend, wouldn't venture up north because it was dangerous to do so. We live in a new age however, and as little as my father likes it, Belfast is now a pretty popular destination for Irish youths on the lash (on an extended, socially acceptable, drinking binge).

We got the train up early in the afternoon and had a few beers on the way up. We got absolutely abolished drunk the first night, as is standard, and then crawled out to breakfast in the morning before hitting an Oktoberfest kind of tent set up. It was the 3rd year in a row we've gone to this festival, it's just really a bunch of benchs laid out and some high % german beer on the tap which they serve in big litre glasses. People come and go all day and get drunk some, but we usually snag a table early and set up for the day. I'm in my final year in college now and I'm sad I won't ever get to be in that exact place with those exact friends ever again. Three and a half years has gone so fast and every day I stay at home now is a missed opportunity. I'll miss college stuff once I'm done in six months for sure.

Spot me?







Pokers

I haven't grinded poker at all since November. My hold'em manager was broke for a spell (ffs hem2) and I just didn't have the energy to fire up stars and have to actually watch the games and think about what I was doing! I still feel like I'm playing ok at the moment when I play, I'm very confident and have been running a ton better this month than in September. I have a vague plan to hit 25nl soon cos im sick of grinding the fucking bustos like some wimp. I genuinely get so discouraged some times when I play for three hours and I win 8$ and it's actually an ok winrate. I gotta invest in my game and try to get out of the bustos and make some skrilla again.

Vegas

So I pretty much have some preliminary plans to go to Vegas this summer. I have a small amount of money saved up, and if I save some more and grind hard for the next few months I should have the required money to make it happen. I'm getting older now and I'm unlikely to ever have the chance to make a living off poker and to play pro for any time. I've no doubt that I'm good enough to grind the 1-2 games for a living (jesus christ that would be desperate if I wasn't) and I really have nothing to lose. GC, Kainer, Bachelder, Dead Money and some others are hopefully going to Vegas this summer so in the next few weeks I'm gonna get talking with them and hopefully I will be able to get over there for 1 month+ . If the cash goes well then I would for sure consider playing some wsop events, as long as people bought pieces, but I would mostly like to grind cash and just meet some people irl and have some fun. Two months ago this was a pipe dream but now, with people talking about it, it feels on the verge of happening so watch this space.

Meaning of life ( and some drink recipes)

I actually still don't have an answer to this question, sorry to let down anyone who I told that the answer would be in my next blog. It's 7am and I'm drinking Budweiser and talking to ISeeDeadMoney, Railm, JayPeterson and Kainer on skype. We're talking about girls with dicks, how many sheeps are in new Zealand, hockey and favourite drinks. In fact, here are some very exact drinks recipes from a gentleman who seems to know his stuff.

Gladiator
Amaretto and Southern Comfort, dropped into a lowball glass of orange juice, and 7 up

Old Fashioned
Muddled cherry and orange 3 splashes of bitter an ounce and a hlaf of bourbon shake with ice pour in glass top off with soda water

That's all for now folks, sorry for the pointless update

Hope everyone's running good
Crash

Hey guys,

So thought I would write a quick review of my travels this summer while I am up and bored. I wish I had taken more pictures and recorded more of my thoughts as summer went on as it would make it easier. I had planned on writing this when I got to Dublin but my situation was such that I didn't much feel like it.

The first two months of summer I spent in Chicago. I stayed about 100m from Wrigley Field in the north suburbs. It was literally the coolest spot to live on the planet. I moved in with two friends initially and then another joined us towards the end of July. I blogged at length about our exploits in Chicago at the time, we mostly lived a pretty ballr life of drinking and parties every night, mixed with a very frugal life in the day time where we attempted to preserve coin to fund the banter at night. There were tons of Irish in the area, which mostly pissed us off, but we managed to make some friends with a house of about 12 Irish girls - This is actually pretty funny because, according to Chicago Law, any dwelling with like 8+ girls or something stupid is considered a brothel. Their land lord got a bit uppity about this toward the end of the summer and gave some of them the boot!

Our Place






We had some friends who lived up north a bit closer to Loyola and the beach up that way. I used to love going to the beach on a sunny day. There was a park up that way where, if you went on any afternoon, you were guaranteed to meet some Brazilians, Mexicans or Nigerians who would want to kick a ball around. The sweltering heat absolutely destroyed us and the only game we won was against Brazilian gentlemen and his three outrageously hot female friends - I assume his various mistresses. After the (mercifully short) matches we would often head to the beach and cool off and just enjoy life and the amazing view of the city.

We used to go to a bar every Tuesday near North and Clyborn called Joes. Best sports bar ever!!! A large pizza was 7$ and a pitcher of Coors Light (which I love... although less now) was 2$. We went here a bunch during June for the basketball play offs and then after that caught a few cubs games there. It got pretty packed after 12, but if you went nice and early on a Tuesday it would be a great night and before long everyone that you knew in Chicago would show their faces. I used to love going there on Tuesdays J







For the rest of the time we just hung out every day. We decided at one point that we needed a games console in the house to make it a complete bachelor pad (haha). We hooked up a PS2 (ballr) to our 200 pound 17 year old tv and got a ton of games for super cheap. We got all the American sports games, mostly to teach us the rules, and had some unreal grudge matches playing them. We got GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas and crushed those games, getting to the last mission of San Andreas on our last night in the apartment... We were minutes away from finishing it and our electricity cut out! It was hard to take but we had to finish the summer with it incomplete, my greatest failure.

One night there was a huge thunder / hail storm. Our house got absolutely battered but it was a ton of fun, it was extreme weather that we're not really used to in Ireland. We took a video of the lightning striking the ground around our apartment, below. EDIT - Can't work out how to embed fml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvMB-x1mNiQ

I was also pretty happy to be able to meet up with some CardRunners in Chicago while Max (RodeoBlue) was passing through town. Epdog came up from Champaign where he was in school and Alex came out from the city with some other Card Runners staff like KidMicah and Andy. There was also a girl who works for draftday I like who came along and brought her friend Jackie who straight away was like to me 'I know you don't I?' I was like no probably not unless you post in the micros forum and got sick advice from me sometime, she was like 'No I work in Duffies, the bouncers kicked you out for being way too drunk last Friday night' haha I had drunk myself half to death that night in a kind of drinking race with my friend Charlie. I went MIA (clearly was kicked out) and woke up in my apartment the next morning with my face torn to shreds. I still have no clue what happened that night. Girl must have thought I was the biggest cut-throat brawler of all time, ah well.

Max - RodeoBlue


Epdog and me in his cardrunner hoodie!



At the start of August my parents came to visit and check out Chi - town. They were super impressed with the city (as was I). One of my friends left us to go and live in Cleveland with some friends, but my friends Ali and Rory bunked up with me and my brother in my parents hotel as we were effectively homeless for the next 50 days. We stayed in the city until Lollapalooza which was awesome (except for the bollocks weather on Sunday - we still got ultra drunk and had a good time. My friend came up from Ocean City to hang out with us and he had this umbrella that if you push the button the umbrella pops up and open with a pretty decent amount of force. Well he had about 3 quarters of a litre of vodka and was running upto people around the festival and shouting ABRA KABABRA at them, pressing the button so the umbrella exploded into their face! I'm pretty sure some nice young ladies might have got some black eyes but was so funny to watch haha he's lucky to be alive.


Got to check out a Cubs game too in the bleachers.



That night, after the Foo Fighters, myself and Rory stopped into a bar on our way back to the hotel. Rory was tired and only stayed for one drink, but I was totally pumped and just stayed and talked to random people at the bar all night. I met one guy from new York who the the biggest sterio type Italian American in the world, think railm01 but darker and with an outrageous sopranos style accent. He took a huge liking to me (I assume cos I was Irish and that's a genuine reason to like people according to Americans) and introduced me to his sisters. Now I was very, very drunk (I had about 3 quarters of a litre of vodka, several beers and several shots of whiskey at this point - I even had a Guinness but just to gain credit and play to my sterio type, I hate Guinness) but I'm pretty sure I counted 7 sisters that he was there with for lollapalooza. I was a foster brother of his for the night as we whiskeyed and bantered with other people around the bar. I was talking to one girl for a while who had just moved to the area, hadn't been at lolla but had just been looking for a bar to try and meet some people from the area. I've probably never met a lonelier soul in my entire life. The poor girl hinted heavily that she didn't have any where to stay that night and that she would very much like to stay in my bed. I tried to explain that I not only had a gf waiting for me 2000 miles away, but that I slept on the floor so if she just needed somewhere to stay I couldn't even help her. I actually still think about that poor girl sometimes, I loved my time in Chicago, but at the end of the day it's a pretty lonely city. I had a really fun day and night anyway and got back to my room at about 6 that night and just collapsed on the floor. It was a pretty sick way to send off the summer in what's now one of my favourite cities. Time had come to move on though, everyone was leaving Chicago and the magic was dying.



I woke up at 9 the next morning and called a taxi, my four friends got it out to the burbs and rented a car and set off along route 66 to California! I love road trips so much and got into the spirit super fast once we got the car. Sadly the next few days is undocumented as we lost our camera, but we had a great time as we drove through St Louis, Oklahoma, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, The Grand Canyon and finally made it to Huntington Beach in LA where my gf was staying.





We all stayed there for a few nights, drinking and getting in on the fun, and then my friend who came with me headed down to San Diego while I stayed in LA with Ruby for a few more nights. We went on a trip to San Francisco on a bus. We found the trip advertised on just a normal travel website, everything normal about it, it was super cheap etc so we just went on the morning to a place called little Saigon (alarm bells should have been ringing). It quickly became apparent that we were the only white people on the 3 full coaches that were heading to San Fran. Literally everyone was Asian. Imagine spending a weekend with 182 Alex Huangs of various ages, all equipped with ultra high tech cameras and peace sign poses. Haha it was mental, but we survived, even if they did eat at an asian buffet every single night.

Note the Asians in the back!!










FUCK THIS IS GETTING LONG. At this point, the date is about August the 20th say. I said goodbye to Ruby (little did I know it would be the last time we would be together) and got the train down to San Diego to meet my friends! I only stayed there one night but made some new friends and took a vast amount of drugs. Probably the less said about our time in San Diego the better



After that we rented a car with the intention of hitting the Vegas. However, when myself and some friends showed up to the car rental place it turned out I booked the car for 4 days later! Well we had already booked our room in Vegas so sadly going later wasn't really an option. Thank the lord they managed to conjure up another car that could hold 7 people, or else my stupidity would have derailed the last leg of summer. Against all the odds, we were off. Looks like I wasted all my one times before we even got to Vegas.

I played about 15 hours of Pokers (1-2) in the time I was there. It kinda separated me from everyone else, but I wasn't sure if I'd ever get a chance to do this again so I played and played. I got super drunk while playing and played far from my best, but still managed to finish up about 150$ by the third night. I got in a 1300 dollar pot one night all in on the flop with AQ on Q83dd vs 88. It was obviously a huge mistake and it cost me big, that extra money could have really fuelled the gambling the last few nights, but it just shows you can't play poker after 22 coronas (unless youre name is Jason Dansker). I kinda remember thinking 'You fool you have a flush draw I read you like a book I have 55%' and shoving 300bbs over his flop raise haha, the guy next to me said after the hand 'hard luck buddy, sick cooler'... livepokerslol

I guess I'll just post a few pics of Vegas and end the blog with a quick account of how I got home (I flew home after 4 nights in Vegas)






Bit gay..







After all the madness I booked my flights home. My friend Ali accompanied me to Chicago where I had a 10 hour lay over. I bought a book and crushed it in those ten hours. I wrote a ton of poker strat articles on my laptop and got chatting to some strangers but I can't pretend it wasn't a very miserable ten hours haha. Went I arrived in London Heathrow I was so exhausted having not slept in probably 3 straight days I just found a couch and curled up and passed another 10 hour layover pretty quick. I could hear the security staff near my little bench making bets on how much longer I would be waiting.. whoever has the over will have won that one anyway. Flight home was quick and I got a serious sleep when I was back in Dublin.

As usual I've no idea how to conclude this. I doubt anyone in the world will read this whole thing but if you do hopefully it will give you some insight into my summer. Another summer not too far away but no summer is ever likely to top this one in terms of pure majesty. Sick Life.

Chris

Hey guys,

Haven't blogged in a while so thought I would bang out how I'm feeling at the moment and what I'm upto. It's something of a transitionary period for myself what with going back to college after a summer away, trying to decide on a career and the steps I'm to take in my final year to move in that direction, my 3 year relationship ending last month, and trying to rebuild my bankroll and start making some serious $ again post full tilt. All that considered, it's been a boring time in my life as I just try to build a new routine and come to terms with things, try to branch out again. Here are my thoughts on things since August;


Poker
I'm just starting to feel like I'm playing well again in poker. I had a well carved out routine for playing when I played rush. Starting a session in rush was very easy, you just open the four tables and can start in less than a minute. Ring games are a pain what with game selecting and waiting for tables. I've also had to adjust to forming hand-to-hand history with other players. I think I've adapted quite well to this however and it's probably increased my winrate from the last few weeks. I'm starting to get some HUD stats on regs and begun to see what spots they play retarded in, see the ones that 3B light all the time (ty for the money you know who you are) and the ones who 4B light all the time (ty for the money you know who you are). I've been super busy in college since the weekend (it's now Thursday morning) so haven't been able to play much but assuming a good run in to the month I might break my post rush volume record (sample size of 1). Having said that my first few days in October consisted of a miserable downswing so for all the hands I've played and how well I think I've played, I just got even for the month today. I will likely post a graph at the end of the month.

Life
Life rumbles on as it always has. I'm mostly busy between college/football/friends and poker. I'm not seeing any girls at the moment and don't feel pressured to any time soon, which is having a very healthy affect on my money situation; I have more spare cash now than I did before summer and I was making 50$ an hour playing rush nl way back then).

I've been broken up with gf for 2 months now give or take a few days. It feels like two years. We speak the odd time on facebook chat but at this point it just feels like I'm talking with anyone else, and the content is mostly aimless chit-chat and meandering banter. Meeting up has been suggested once or twice, but to me (someone who's been in a difficult break up before) the idea seems insane as I know this can only cause more harm than good and drag out the 'grieving process' further. It's always still tempting as I've yet to replace her as a friend and if you're not on guard in those situations I think you it's easy to forget how different things would be. I think I'd rather not see her again than meet up regularly and have to pretend to be happy with that much. While it may seem extreme, not seeing her again (except perhaps by accident - there are 1 million people in Dublin) actually seems pretty likely at the moment and suits me for the most part. I bet there are plenty of guys out there who can relate to this feeling. We've only been friends since we were 18 and were bf and gf almost immediately. We don't share any common friends and live and go to school on opposite sides of Dublin. So far the break up has gone as well as I could have expected and I think circumstances are perfect to just write that chapter out of my life and try to move on with what I have, no hard feelings. I can't honestly say I feel terrific and am enjoying my freedom or anything like that, but I definitely feel fine and I'm numb to the point I barely think about it.

Replacing those few hours a day when I would speak to my ex has proved difficult. I get about 3 text messages a week now and I'm realizing that my network is pretty weak. I have hundreds of friends, but have simply gotten lazy and fallen out with them. I went to the pub with a friend last week, one who I see every week and used to spend a lot of time with. He said he had no clue that my relationship had ended. I was complacent about maintaining relationships in the recent past it seems. Nobody relies on me anymore and this means now I have nobody to rely on. It's fine and is just something that I will have to change in time - I can't just barely speak to people for months and years and not expect them to replace me as I now need to replace my ex -gf.

College
Not to bore anyone with details of my classes or w/e but college is just starting back now and I've been super busy. Met with the client for my final year project during the week and he seemed like a laid back and friendly character, which bodes well I think. This should make for a less stressful year than I expected. Also discovered that I only have 4 final exams come May which is pretty sweet news. 'Sweet as a nut' as Kainer might say. The project is technical in nature but is web based and has some potential for strategic input, so I will likely hit up the swamp sometime for some advice as I feel like people could contribute some ideas.

That's it for now. Apologies for the super emo blogs recently. Looking back it has been a hard two months and I've been grateful for the support I've received. I'm grateful for this community for teaching me how to play poker, but with Cr friends recently I've been talking more about history with girls than history with regs. This is defo a good thing.

Good luck at the tables for anyone who's playing,
Chris

Hey guys,

So back in college in the morning. Going into my final year now and things have to be taken seriously if I'm to have options at the end of this year (and if there's one thing I hate its not having a ton of options). Still trying to get over the bad sleeping pattern I developed since I got home from America and broke up with the gf. I'm up until nearly five now watching videos on youtube, reading the forums and grinding 10nl.

As Re: poker, there's a few things going on I guess. 1) I've been putting in decent volume at 10nl (12-13k in ~2 weeks is pretty good for me). It's a rollercoaster as these stakes always seem to be, think I'm running at around 6bbs which is fine, I'm above EV but have probably lost 15BI's in spots where I was 85%+ on the turn so I feel I haven't ran great overall - I know this is nothing to moan about or anything, but it adds to the frustration of being here and making next to no money for the time I'm putting in.

With starting college tomorrow I'd be very surprised if my volume next month matches this months. I will try to put in 500 hands a day in the evenings, but when you take into a/c days I stay late, go out drinking, or am just pretty busy I'll be lucky to top 10k for October. Frustrating when I'm as broke as I am.

One glimmer of hope is these mysterious FRENCH INVESTORS. I've been following the thing pretty close on twitter ( I'm near it several hours and day and try to retweet as much info as I can, follow me if you're interested in the FT monies as that's what the majority of my tweets concern - http://twitter.com/#!/CrashoutCassius

Hopefully all these things can be sorted out before Christmas. I want my bankroll, but I also want my friends, you guys, the guys in the swamp, I want people to get their savings back and their normal lives back. I want there to be life after Full Tilt for everyone.

Saw a guy in the City the other evening in a FT tee shirt and I gave him a hard time for wearing the FT logo. He hadn't a fucking clue what I was talking about, fucking charlatans. I guess its better than every single potential recreational player on the planet associating the words full tilt with the words ponzi scheme - I think when FT release things saying 'we're not a ponzi scheme we just stole your money and people react angrily - we have a common interest guys. We both want the poker industry to strive and we both want FT to seem like a valuable company. Perhaps people don't realise that the FT software could be sold but not the brand? If that happens then there's no pay back for anyone. We want FT to look as innocent as possible coming out of this, which is why I'm still angry at the DOJ for mis branding this situation. Nobody seems to have players interests in mind anymore.

Kinda a pointless update and rant. It's 5 and I'm bored :l

Lets pray for some news in the next few days re: FT.

Sayonaro and GL at the tables for anyone playing,

CrashoutCassius

Hey guys,

Back playing for the last few days on stars and got a few thousand hands in, I have to say it's a drag playing non rush poker, the hands rack up so slowly, but I've played a lot and I'm enjoying being back.

I feel like the adjustment from rush - ring is more difficult than the adjustment was going from ring to rush a year ago. I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing when I try to table select, or when table ninja pops up a table and I'm being 3b and I can't remember for the life of me if that player 3b me the last 7 hands in a row.

I feel like I'm playing too many tables too, and not paying enough attention to where the fish is, and who is playing how... this could be due to an over reliance I've developed on my HUD, which is obviously next to useless at the moment.

Anyway, at least I've been winning. Looking forward to getting to around the 50k mark and being to look over my hands and work on my game a bit, right now I feel like it's too soon to know how I'm playing. I feel that I'm playing ok pre flop, maybe a bit over aggro (I've dropped down a few stakes). Post flop I've been paying off a bit lightly and probably value betting too thin without better reads / any image on this site.

I find stars software quite nice. I always have plenty of time. My TN isn't filling out my bet sizes at the moment though, so hopefully I can work that out.

Graph for the first 3 days below.

Ok so whoever used my computer for the last 3 months (clearly my little brother) has managed to lose all my hands. I mailed Holdem manager today to try and fix up my HEM which seemed to have got a bit muddle while I was gone. I re-installed it and I now have 7k hands for the last year and a half :) I'm up approx 127$ in this time so it's not a bad start!

Going out drinking tonight so will probably start back at poker tomorrow! Kinda feels nice having a fresh start, and it makes no difference since practically all my stats on players were at Rush, which is obviously defunct.

Gl at the tables,
Chris

Hey guys,

Spent the whole summer fighting for it but after 3 years together me and Ruby finally broke up. We had been up and down for the last 3 months but in the end I just couldn't beg her to try and work things out anymore. We had a long chat the other night and she basically said she wanted to move on and try other things. She told me that she was with another guy when she was in California, but this didn't affect me at all as I felt there was something bigger on the line. I haven't always been the best boyfriend to her and I figured I could forgive her for this, especially since she didn't sleep with him and she seemed quite sorry. I told her that I thought things would be ok but 24 hours later I was over at her house and she seemed distant again. Seemed pretty clear she thought things had run their course.

I got a taxi home from her place and I've just been sitting here for the last while talking to any of my friends who are online. The truth is she was my best friend and if something else big had happened to me I would have turned to her and her alone. I have no idea who to talk to or even just how to fill the hours until I start school again in three weeks.

I'm only 21 so I know this isn't the end of the world, but I sincerely hate breaking up, especially when it hasn't been my decision. I see people who are in long term relationships and are making things work with their girlfriend and I'm truly jealous. I don't know how you people make it work, yet 3 months ago I thought I was one of you.

I've done so many things with her and had some of the best times of my life, so I really am trying to avoid using the words 'regret' and 'hate' as tempting as it is. I think it would be disrespectful and being overly abusive of her would tarnish my mostly happy memories. I'm going to try and be logical about this and not be results orientated.

Most people would see some silver lining to all this, but I can't see it. I know there's going to be one though, I just have to come across it myself. I have one year left of my degree and I had been worried about how we were going to juggle our relationship once I was graduated and she finished med school. Well, now that concern is gone and I'm free to pursue anything I want anywhere I want in one year. I know it might seem insane to say that I wasn't free to do this when I was with her, but the last three months have been nothing like our relationship before and I really would have been willing to put it all on the line for her.

No idea how to conclude this, just thought it was a good idea to put it in writing that I've come to an agreement with my girlfriend and we've decided to break up for good. Putting it out in a sentence like that makes me feel a lot better, I hate all my feelings of denial that I have, I like saying it and being in control of it.

I know there is a lot of knowledge and experience in the group of people who read around these pages, so if you took the time to read this and know me and have any advice for me, feel free to pm me it. I'm gonna need some support from anyone I can get it from, especially for the first few weeks I think. I have 3 years worth of routine to break.
Chris