I have been keeping pretty busy out here in San Diego. Since my last entry, I went on to final table the 3x FR NL shootout the day after winning the knockout event, and after that 7th place finish was first on the FTOPS TLB, the prize of which is a custom avatar and paid entries into all of the next FTOPS tournaments. Not one to pass up on the chance of being able to see my goofy face grinning back at me while I grind online, I decided to play all the other FTOPS tournaments and see if I could pull out the win. Mistake. I wound up finishing 3rd in the TLB and kinda burning out on way too much tournament poker.

Luckily, it's not particularly hard to unwind out here in San Diego. Since FTOPS ended, I have done a pretty good job of getting out and about. Torrey Pines Natural State Reserve is close by and is honestly one of the most beautiful beaches and tropic hiking areas that I have ever seen. I've only been out there a few times but it definitely seems like there are more than enough trails to get a solid day's worth of hiking in, and being able to finish up on the beach and go for a swim afterwards is a pretty great treat. I've also been getting outdoors in the form of learning how to play golf. I bought a set of clubs on a whim about a week ago and have since then been to the driving range twice and out on a couple of courses with Craig, TJ, Clayton and Dave - all poker players living in San Diego. I am terrible at golf. Really, horribly, bad. But I'm getting better, and the betting aspect of the sport will only encourage me to continue doing so. Also, there's really something to be said about how weirdly manly it feels to crush the shit out of a drive or fairway shot.

Although golf is definitely fun, spending 5 hours outside driving around in a cart and drinking beers isn't exactly a great form of exercise, so I also joined a gym across the street from our place that has a reasonable weight room, pool, and outdoor tennis courts that Craig and I have already taken advantage of a few times. Staying fit and spending plenty of time outdoors doesn't seem like it will be very hard to do in San Diego..

As of late though, Craig and I have really been relaxing out here and not really doing much of anything. Golfing, BBQing, drinking... leading a pretty tough life really. The Cardinals are also in town for a four-game series against the Padres and we went to Game 1 of the series tonight to cheer the Cards on to a 5-1 victory. PETCO is a reasonably nice park but it was pretty crazy to see how few of the seats were filled; it felt like we were walking into a ghost-town when we got to the game 15 minutes prior to the first pitch. Also, it felt like there were more people sporting Cards gear than Padres, but meh, STL just represents all over the map. On that note, I'm kind of a sellout... I was wearing shorts/Cards t-shirt all day today and it wound up being fairly cold at the game so I had to buy a Padres sweatshirt (wtf @ $150 for a sweatshirt) and awkwardly take off my shirt in a bathroom filled with drunk dudes pissing, put on the sweatshirt, put the shirt over it and still rep Cardinal red. Anyways, pretty stoked for the rest of the series.

** On to the actual poker content of this so-called 'poker blog'.

Ever since June or so, but realistically more noticeably since my FTOPS score, I have just really stopped taking poker seriously. I'm back to playing my good 'ol 70/55 style and no amount of postflop knowledge is going to be able to turn those numbers into solid winners. So, I went back to the only strategy I know. I cashed out another large chunk of the money that I had online and I'm back to only being adequately rolled for 5/10 and 10/20. For some reason I always have a hard time taking poker seriously as a profession when I am over-rolled for 10/20-25/50 (most likely because I'm gun-shy about nosebleeds and have a weird disdain for having too much money) so I think that having some BR-related pressure to actually sit down, grind, and print bills will be good for me. To keep myself honest about this, and to hopefully cement for myself the fact that I play poker to make money, not to drunkenly or absent-mindedly use it as a recreational means, I am going to regularly update this blog with results, including my win-rates at 5/10-10/20, mix game results that aren't tracked by HEM, and any other poker-related venture that I may find myself partaking in. Hopefully the numbers are green and plentiful in the coming weeks!

Oh yeah, and I'm gonna be in a movie... Sorta

Cheers,
Mike

Pretty self-explanatory...



First Craig chops an FTOPS two days ago for 100k, then I ship this one today.. We're off to a pretty hot start here in San Diego!

... Winning a tournament had always been a poker-related goal/aspiration of mine, and today definitely didn't disappoint. There is something very exciting and satisfying about literally winning every chip in play; it's a true sense of accomplishment that a cash game player really can't quite recreate.


Anyways, life is good. I feel completely comfortable and at home in San Diego, and my results are already starting to drastically improve. Very excited for the future.

Cheers,
Mike

Hey everyone, sorry its been so long since the last blog. Life has been very hectic for me since July came around, hectic but very good. There's a lot to write about, so I guess that I'll just progress chronologically. My final trip to Vegas was a great success; I didn't play a single hand of poker and instead treated my good friend Marc who finished off what was essentially a 3-month travel vacation to a week of great dining and going out in Vegas. Tough life.. Like I had mentioned in my previous blog, I had been considering not playing the main event this year, and I wound up going through with that. Luckily, the poker Gods rewarded my diligence with a main event sweat for my current roommate, Craig (craigthedeac), or as he prefers to be called (he doesn't) - #55. Guess what place he finished in the main..

Instead of the main event, I drove my car back to Anaheim and flew out to St. Louis the next day. Since Craig was still dropping bodies in the main event and could no longer go to the HR Derby and All-Star Game, I gave one of my high school buddies a free-roll for the events and we had a blast. Small rant from the game: It was a big event this year with a lot of patriotic themes including a huge flag carried out by military personnel, Obama throwing out the first pitch, as well as a video from all of the living American presidents. Not only did Bush inexplicably get very audible applause during his segment in the video, but you could also make out a bunch of boos in the midst of general applause when Obama came out onto the field to throw the first pitch. To be fair, he was wearing a White Sox jacket and some politically insensitive people might just knee-jerk boo at the lack of Cardinal red, but I was pretty dissapointed with the majority STL crowd at the seemingly backwards sense of political awareness at the game. That little blip aside, the game was of course a blast... next year's our year NL!

After the baseball festivities, I hung around in St. Louis for another few weeks and caught up on sorely missed time with my high school buddies. Most days consisted of a bunch of time spent outdoors - Kan Jam (KanJam.com - thank me later for this), basketball, pool, etc and then long nights spent drinking, fooling around and talking about life late into the morning. I greatly prefer that sort of existence to the hit-the-club type of attitude that most poker players seem to have, and it was a very refreshing break for me to be back "home," even though technically only my brother lives in the STL these days. I think this trip really reinforced for me how important it is to 'take time off poker' so to say; my close circle of friends is very diversified in their life interests/goals, and it was great to hear about everyone's plans/experiences rather than relive the same poker-themed conversation of the last year. Not only do I love hearing about my friends' achievements in life, but removing myself from poker society also always makes me appreciate just how lucky I am to have the freedom in my life that I currently do. Being home really highlights for me how damn cool all of my friends are as well; here is what the group of 4 guys that were home during this break are doing in the next year: starting medical school in Denver after spending the last year being a ski bum and then living on an organic farm in Hawaii, a motivational speaking tour across the country education people on tolerance through a funny and touching speech gathered from personal experiences (marcspeaks.com), finishing up a second year of Teach for America in New Haven, and lastly, doing the business/strategy consulting grind. Clearly, we all have pretty different outlooks on life and stories to share when we all meet up.

But alas, my time in St. Louis eventually faded away and it was back to Anaheim to pack up all my things, drive to San Diego and look for/sign a lease on housing, drive back, get a U-haul and drive the heavy things to the SD crib, drive the U-Haul back, load the rest of the things in the car, and make one final trip out of Anaheim and on to San Diego, never looking back! I had about a week and half to do all of this... It was stressful. Nevertheless, Craig and I got to San Diego and got things done very quickly. We checked out Mission Beach first and although an oceanfront place was pretty enticing, it seemed like it was always a madhouse in that area and would probably feel a bit too transient. We also checked out oceanfront places in La Jolla (too many old people), lofts downtown (too loud, damn trains) and ultimately settled on a condo complex in outer La Jolla 3 miles from the beach, 15 minutes from downtown and 5 miles from the bars in PB. The last week was mostly spent going out and buying a couch, desks, TV tables, scoping out the area a bit (San Diego is unbelievably gorgeous) and trying to acclamate back to reality after the hectic move. Now that everything is more or less settled, I'm starting to get really excited about the plentiful opportunities to get outdoors here. I went out and bought a nice hybrid road/trail bike that I've taken out a few times so far, and given that Craig is reasonably good at both tennis and golf - both of which seem to be available everywhere in La Jolla - I think that I'll have a lot of excuses to be getting outdoors in the next year. Oh yeah, and having the beach a short drive/bike ride away isn't bad either. All in all, I'm very excited for the coming year and already feel more 'at home' and comfortable in San Diego than I ever did in Anaheim.

As far as poker goes, the last 1.5 months went pretty poorly for me, both running bad and letting it affect my play as well. I was travelling the entire time and have always had poor results on the laptop... so it goes. Now that I'm all settled and back to the desktop, I want to ease back into things pretty slowly so I cashed a chunk out and am going to be playing mostly 10/20 with a bit of 5/10 and 25/50 mixed in for either the remainder of the year, or until I make a few hundred K, whichever comes first. I'm already up just under 50k and satellited into the 5k WCOOP main event in the two days that I've been playing on the desktop, so things are obviously off to a great start. Let's hope the heater continues!

Cheers,
Mike

Today I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing my biggest losing day in 2009 so far. I'll spare the reader bad beat hands, sick coolers and imperfect play, and instead just vent by posting my graph for the month on Stars:



This is definitely the worst that I have ever run at 25/50 over such a small sample of hands. It has been pretty brutal. It feels pretty weak to admit it, but I am still not at that point professionally where I can just shrug this off as variance and go about my day unfazed. Although I know that I am better than 99% of the poker playing population at dealing with variance, I still can't help but get that deep, gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach and hot in the face every time I go through a particularly rough stretch of cards. I had that feeling today. It was uncomfortable. It is a helpless, empty feeling; like a mouse running on a stationary wheel, except that instead of turning as it usually does (though still not going anywhere even when spinning) it just refuses to spin. Stuck in place, unable to change the surrounding environment - that is how I can best describe the rough patches that poker inherently provides.

Luckily, I am still somehow up for the month thanks to crushing souls on FTP, but it just doesn't feel gratifying for me. For better or for worse, I associate FTP with taking shots, bad game selection and general play that gratifies my degenerate side; my wins feel less 'material' but at least the losses don't bother me at all. Stars however, I associate with my professional side, my grind 'til it hurts side, and so it always invariably gets me a bit down to consistently lose over long stretches of time on the site. Oh well. If poker was easy then everybody would be doing it, right?

Regardless, the recent weeks have left me once again feeling pretty burned out with poker so I am likely going to take a break for a while starting with my return to Vegas on the 29th, focusing fully on partying with my housemates and my friend Marc who flies in on the 2nd and not on playing poker. In fact, I think I'm going to skip the main event this year. My heart is just not in it; if I make a deep run I'll have to postpone my trip to St. Louis and I'm craving the comfort of close friends far too much to commit to focusing on the tournament. Not able to completely give up on the huge EV of the tournament, I've still bought up a bunch of percentages of friends so I can hopefully still get a sweat.

Heh. Well, I had been playing a session the whole time while writing out this entry and it's tough to imagine a much more fitting end to the day: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4413708

Ahh, it'll be nice to put poker on the backburner for a few weeks. I hope that everyone is well.

Cheers,
Mike

Lots to talk about, where to begin.

As far as Vegas goes, I am crushing last year's 0 for 14 WSOP tournament performance with a whopping 1 for 1 in 2009. Unfortunately, I've only played one tournament this year on account of catching whatever really bad flu was going around in Vegas and being bed-ridden for the last week or so. I would be pissed about the bad luck but by this point in my life, I've just accepted my terrible immune system for what it is and expect it to be a 50/50 shot pretty much any time I travel, and especially when I travel for poker-related reasons, that I'm going to get sick. I generally try to keep pretty regular hours, eat healthy, and get tons of sleep; I guess that the constant activity, lack of sleep, bad diet and constant partying that inevitably surrounds poker trips does me in. Oh well, so it goes.

At least this time around, I was smart enough to know that Vegas is no place to get better and detox so I went ahead and booked a flight back to Anaheim shortly after throwing up in the Rio parking lot and unregistering from the 5k PLO. On a related note, I think I probably hold the WSOP record for unregistering from a tournament with least amount of time left on the clock; cards were in the air as I was getting led out of the poker room by the floor. Anyways, I'll spare all the details of the sickness, but I had a raging fever for 3 or 4 days, didn't eat for about the same amount of time, and just generally spent the time in bed being a sourpuss. Quick aside: I got a germ culture at the doctor's office while getting some antibiotics and it is undoubtebly one of the most uncofmortable physical experiences ever. I better have had swine flu so I at least get a good story out of it; otherwise, it's just a foot-long metal wire in my nose for nothing.

On the bright side, I figure another few days and I'll be completely better from this flu, and good riddance it'll be. To occupy my time recently, I have mostly just been watching Dexter and trying to put in some hands. I have been pleasantly surprised by Dexter. I tend to dislike shows/movies that focus too intensely on violence but Dexter is just created in such a unique, artistic way, that it is hard to not be drawn into the story.

On the poker front, I haven't been playing too much since I have after all been mostly really sick lately, but when I have felt up to logging sessions, things have been extremely swingy. Two sessions come to mind. In one, I played a very aggressive opponent HU at 50/100 on two tables and went from being down 20, to up 80, and finally finished up 40 or so. We played under 200 hands. It was exciting. The other session, I took a little shot at Gus. Backstory: fees is obsessed with the idea of me playing Gus. I wander back into my room today after a trip to Whole Foods and find a few missed calls from fees. "Hello?" " [fees out of breath] He's sitting, waiting for you." "What?" "Gus." "Ugh fine, hold on." As it turned out, Gus was sitting at a 300/600 ante table waiting for action. Meh, as good a time as any I suppose. We played probably all of 20 hands before he stacked me on a 55/45 (I had the 55!) and that was that. I'm happy that I had the discipline to just accept the broken shot and quit. In past times, I would have definitely wound up martingaling and either busting my FTP account or having an epic degenerate session. I prefer the new, nittier me. I guess that there aren't a ton of people that would refer to themselves as a nit after taking a 300/600 HU shot, but what can I say, I'm a special kind of nit.

Anyways, I will hopefully be getting back to Vegas in the next 4 or 5 days. I picked a pretty unfortunate time to get sick since I missed the two tournaments I was really looking forward to playing (5 and 10k PLO) but at least I'll hopefully be refreshed and good to go for partying and the main event when I triumphantly return.

Oh yeah, and I booked the Kilimanjaro trip with my brother for late December of this year. Uh oh, time to get in shape!

Cheers,
Mike

So like the title suggests, I made day 2 of the 2.5k PLO event.

My first table of the day was amazing; only 2 competent players and everyone else playing super passive preflop and fit-or-fold postflop. I ran up my stack to about 2x average without any bumps in the road in the first 2 levels, then got Badugi hands the rest of the day and just folded a ton, raised in late position (still played probably 2x as many hands as I should be, but meh) and would fire a barrel or two and give up. Frustrated, I wound up getting it in really bad against SirWatts who was on my immediate left and 3bet my UTG +1 open to 5.5K with 200/400 blinds when I had AJT4ds. I make the bad call and we see a flop of J92dd (I don't have diamonds); obviously I monkey it on in there because I'm already sick of playing this tournament, he snaps with AAxxdd, and I somehow bink the river T to get the nasty suckout.

After that, my stack was about 2x average and I didn't really do much of anything until the following hand comes up: limped 4-ways preflop and I have 448Tds in the SB; I complete and we go 6-handed to the flop. The flop is Q42dd (I have T-high diamonds) and it goes check, check, check, bet by a new player at the table who had been limping about 85% of his hands preflop, folds around to me and I c/r for commiting stacks. Folds to him and he snaps with QQxx; I once again reach into my luckbox and hit a river diamond to take down about an 80k pot, putting me at about 90k in chips with the average at 40 or so. Eventually, that table breaks and I get moved to a significantly tougher table with a few live nosebleed PLO players that I recognize from the circuit, J.C Tran with the tournament chip lead, and a few other solid guys with reasonable stacks. From here, I proceed to not make a hand for about 5 hours in multiway raised pots (and play pretty poorly because I'm still ridicuously tired for the jetlag and activity of the last few days), and just dwindle my stack down to about 30k, with the average being 55 I belive for tomorrow's restart. I think there are 60 or so players left with 45 paying. I obviously don't care too much about min-cashing this event or whanot, but it would be really nice to get last year's WSOP monkey off my back and finally cash in an event. So hopefully I don't bubble, but if I do, meh, I think that I played pretty well and am excited for the rest of the bigger tournaments.

Wow, that turned out to be way more thorough that I was expecting.

Anyways, tournament poker aside, I feel like I have started off Vegas on the right foot so far. I managed to get a workout in yesterday morning despite waking up at 6 and hating my life because I couldn't sleep, and have so far stayed on pace for the mercury poisoning that I will inevitably get if I stay in Vegas too long. After eating at Yellowtail last night, I think that of my 5 meals in Vegas, 4 of them so far have been Sushi, and I don't really see the trend ending any time soon.

Now for some pool time before the 2.5K restars.

Cheers,
Mike

Like the title says, I finally got to Vegas today!

First rewind a bit, my trip to New Jersey was amazing. I had been craving the immediate comfort of family for quite some time, and my parents didn't dissapoint. The weather was beautiful the first 2 days I was there, and my Dad and I went hiking/canoeing around the Princeton area, which is absolutely gorgeous. I think like a lot of people, my general mental image of New Jersey tends to be a bit on the dirty side for whatever reason, but this trip really opened up my eyes as to why it's known as the garden state; a lot of the state is really lush, green and very inviting to an outdoors lifestyle. So yeah, lots of down-time in nature, home-cooked Russian meals, a lot of practice for my ever-worsening Russian, my parents teaching me a new card game and proceeding to mercileslly beat me at it... the good life.

I got back to Anaheim late on the 11th and then spent all of yesterday running around frantically trying to get everything ready for Vegas. It's pretty amusing how lazy of a person poker has turned me into; yesterday I got my oil changed, brakes tuned up, did some random last-minute shopping (ship some comfortable American Apparell stuff) and did a few loads of laundry and was completely exhausted and proud of myself! Heh...

Yesterday culminated with watching Kung Fu Panda with the roommates (I'm an epic sucker for animated movies, and really, lots of other childish things) and it was amazing. Early to bed, then woke up around 7 in the morning as I'm still a bit jetlagged only to find that all of the electricity in my building was turned off. Neat. A pretty perfect ending to my time in Anaheim. So with nothing to do, I wound up rolling out to Vegas way on the early side, definitely before ten.

Not 30 minutes before I had been on the road the car in front of me whips up some solid piece of wood which flies up and cracks my front bumper while we're going 90 on the highway. Hmmm, not a great start to the trip. Then it starts to rain, which is always a pretty bizarre thing to see while driving out through the desert. Meh, the car still runs fine and I've never been one for aesthetics so I just keep on going. I made great time today, making the 280 mile trip in just barely over 3 hours.

As for my actual time in Vegas, I have spent most of it trying to round up some cash since a lot of my recent checks which I had been saving up to deposit into my checking bounced recently seeing as how I went to deposit the slieu of them on the same day that the government froze and siezed 30 million dollars worths of FTP and Stars funds in American banks. I was somewhat successful and managed to so far get 15k cash for online money without really putting forward too much of an effort, so I'm pleased with that and will be looking to get into the cash games at the Rio in the next few days. I also registered for the 2500 PLO tournament tomorrow; I'm sure that I'll be sick of these tournaments within a few days, but for some reason I am super stoked to play live poker this year and am hoping that this high lasts for a while.

Otherwise, I got dinner tonight with a random group of 8 poker players at Naked Fish, which as usual, did not dissapoint (and I faded CCR with 2 of the 7 cards in there, ship it). We ran into CR's own Dave Benefield there, who I hadn't met before tonight, and from the little that we interacted, he turned out to be as normal and down to earth as he generally comes off in his blog.

Following that, Craig and I returned to last year's degenerate form and dumped a bunch of money at Pai-Gow. Pretty standard. Coupling that with my one 500 dollar hand of blackjack at the Bellagio to either get the trip started out on the right foot or get the runbad out before the tournaments, I'm down 1300 so far on the trip in pit games and am going to keep a running total to remind myself of how much of an idiot I am!

It's still pretty early right now in Vegas but I feel like I haven't slept in 2 days now and am going to try to pass out on the early side tonight, wake up early tomorrow, work out before the tournament, then start my path of WSOP domination. I'm reading Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire right now and have really been looking forward to my pre-bed reads as of late; he is a really engaging writer and is getting me pretty fired up about gardening and general natural perspective as of late. It's a nice change.

Vegas baby, Vegas! Can't wait for the summer ahead.

Cheers,
Mike

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of ... resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

Before I go ahead and relate this quote to poker/life, I just have to say that I am absolutely in love with Vonnegut's writing. I've gotten through five of his books in the last 2 weeks or so and am really enjoying his wacky approach to fiction and the random nuggets of wisdom that he throws in mid-satire. Pretty much all of his work comes extremely recommended from me. But back to the quote:

I can't speak for others, but for me, my biggest challenge with poker has been working on, shattering, regaining, cursing, praising, and finally cementing a balanced sense of self-control. Self-control is obviously a very general term, and with me, relates mostly to playing within my means (within the strict guidelines of a BR) and keeping myself happy (not steaming) in the face of hardship [bad runs, life leaks, etc]. Since January of this year, I have lived and breathed poker; it has been my late-night glass of wine and early morning cup of coffee, so to say. I have worked tirelessly on my game, essentially putting my entire philosophy of poker and game-play on its head. I have learned where I struggle and where I succeed, where others fail and falter, and [un?]fortunately, I have accustomed myself to the knowledge that when it comes down to it, poker is such a grind. Like any other job, it is your mind processing the same general information, the same layout, the same framework, the same game. Sure, opponents change, stakes gradually climb-peak-descend, and the way the money is pushed changes every day. Through it all, however, like a mouse in a cage, we are all only worried about the end result, whether it be for the day, the week, month, or year, we are all chasing an everchanging number. I know this, and am surely the wiser for it. Many people don't.




This is my graph for the month so far on Stars. Certainly not a beautiful work of art, but is it enough to warrant a bad mood? Nah, not really. Is it enough to reconsider my game? Nah. What is it then? Just a bump in an otherwise smooth road. I am really happy that this is what my frame of mind has evolved into it; I am basically mechanic when it comes to poker.

One thing that I still struggle with, however, is being resentful of people who do not appreciate the inherent hardships that poker brings. What makes poker beautiful, to me, is the amount of discipline that it requires to succeed; the long, hard hours that are enough to make your eyes bleed; the many times you want to bet but realise he hasn't worked as hard as you have, hasn't seen what you have, and therefore doesn't have the willpower to fold; the times your desire to see his cards are so overwhelming that your body basically pushes you across the table and rips the cards one by one from his hand, but instead you stare calmly ahead and watch your cards, in a perfect cloud of 4, strike gently against the muck. There are so many variables to account for, so many different people to understand, and so many draws to hit/fade, that it is sometimes overwhelming. It is so easy to get caught up in poker and forget all the other beautiful shit out there.

This rant brought to you by [name excluded for professional purposes] this fishes graph over the last month or so (this is where my EV lies):


I generally wouldn't post such a thing, but this player has handled himself with a ton of disrespect and has just clearly not paid his dues in the game. Things like this discrepany of results used to eat me up inside, and honestly, they still bother me.. but nothing like it used to be. The last six months have been fairly lonely for me, and therefore extremely intrsopective. I graduated college, decided to move away from all of my close connections, started a new job, and dealt with a terrible roommate/friend. Through it all though, there are just so many upsides. I made a ton of new, good poker-playing friends, I opened myself up to new experiences and living without the immediate comfort of friends/family for a short while, and I have managed to have an extremely profitable year as direct consequence of countless hours that I have spent pouring sweat into this game. I am better for my hardships, and they are now coming to an end.

I just finished up 2 weeks here alone in Anaheim after my remaining roommate went back to St. Louis after classes wrapped up for him. It has been lonely, for sure, but I made the most of it. I haven't smoked weed in 3 weeks and feel ridiculously good about it, I have been exercising for at least an hour every single day for a few months now, I end most nights with a good book instead of a boring grind, and I have been cooking a ton for myself and generally living a healthy life, both in body and in mind.

To be fair though, it has been boring. I can't express enough how ready I am for the degeneracy and constant activity of Vegas. Ryan (fees) and I threw down for Lakers/Magics tickets last night, got wasted, and got to cheer the Lakers on to another blowout (I'm pretty sure we're good luck, the Lakers have won by at least 25 points both playoff games we've been to). The glitz and glamour of LA pumped me up for Vegas; I can't wait to reap the delicious meals, good shows, and fun clubs that are the fruit of my last 6 month's labor.

I am leaving to see my parents in New Jersey tomorrow morning. I'm stoked; I miss my friends and family an infinite amount. Sorry that this blog was on the emotional/introspective side, but hey, I'm an honest guy and that's life. I can't wait for Vegas baby! I have a few prop bets up for the events that I'm going to be playing and am in good spirits to party it up and focus on poker when the time calls for it.

Hope everyone's lovin life. See ya guys in Vegas!

Cheers,
Mike

I had originally been planning on driving up to Vegas on the 31st, staying for 5 days, then driving back to Anaheim and flying out to see my parents the very next day and started thinking about it, realized that there was nothing in Vegas that couldn't wait for a week, and so decided to cancel the first leg of the trip in favor of just lounging here in Anaheim a little longer. My roommate just wrapped up grad school classes for the year anyways, so it should be a fun time as is.


As far as poker goes, I have been logging a ton of hands this month, and though it has been very swingy as usual, I think that I am again having a six-figure month, so no complaints. Feeling good, I decided to take a shot at a deep 50/100 HU game with a player on FTP who has been playing some of the nosebleeds recently. He was pretty damn aggro which is probably not a great type of player to be taking shots against, but meh, with great risk comes great reward!


.... Or not.


***** Hand History for Game 12370124739 ***** (Full Tilt)
$10000.00 USD PL Omaha - Friday, May 22, 03:12:20 ET 2009
Table Vale (heads up deep) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: mikeyG16 ( $19841.00 USD )
Seat 2: DIN_FRU ( $39946.00 USD )
mikeyG16 posts small blind [$50.00 USD].
DIN_FRU posts big blind [$100.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to mikeyG16 [ 5s 7d 7c 6h ]
mikeyG16 raises [$250.00 USD]
DIN_FRU calls [$200.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 2d, Jc, 4h ]
DIN_FRU checks
mikeyG16 bets [$400.00 USD]
DIN_FRU calls [$400.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 7h ]
DIN_FRU checks
mikeyG16 bets [$1100.00 USD]
DIN_FRU raises [$4300.00 USD]
mikeyG16 raises [$13200.00 USD]
DIN_FRU raises [$34946.00 USD]
mikeyG16 calls [$4841.00 USD]
DIN_FRU shows [2h, 4c Js Jd ]
mikeyG16 shows [5s, 7d 7c 6h ]
DIN_FRU wins $20105.00 USD
** Dealing River ** [ 6c ]
DIN_FRU wins $39681.50 USD from main pot

The most brutal part about this hand is that I actually got disconnected after he c/raised me on the turn and was sweating being able to get connected again before I timed out; it was a pretty funny switch of emotions in a few seconds. A pretty sick cooler to be sure; better luck next time I suppose!


Also, to update on the last entry where I was considering my brother's birthday present, we have narrowed it down to the following 5 trips, all of which look amazing:


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/latin/chile_fitz.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/latin/argentina.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/africa/kilclimb.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/latin/argentina.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/africa/bot.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/namer/alaska_kenai.html



Alrighty, that's all I got for now..


Cheers,
Mike

So after the last sourpuss runbad entry, I went through all of my recent hands and was pretty surprised to actually find my latest leak pretty quickly and see that it could be easily plugged. I took a quick break to clear my head, and then logged one of the longest sessions in my life. I hadn't intended for the day to turn into a poker grind but so it goes sometimes - the games were great, I was stuck big on the day, and felt recharged after the session review. I wound up playing a total of just under 5k hands on the day (my most ever by a huge margin) and although I didn't check the cashier at the end of the day (I try to check as little as possible, it's kind of a bad habit with me) I'm pretty sure that I cut my losses on the day down by at least 40-50k, which felt great. It's amazing what a little bit of focus, determination, and of course rungood can do for you in this industry! I guess that the poker Gods must have sensed my burgeoning sense of pride/happiness because this is the hand that I ended the session on, but I am still very happy with the comeback that I was able to make: http://www.pokerhand.org/?4241274



As far as the real world goes, I have been putting in so many hours working on my game recently that it only makes sense to reward myself a bit. So with that said, I'll be going to Game 7 of the Lackers/Rockets series with fees/corbin tomorrow which I'm really stoked for seeing as how it's going to be my first ever basketball game and a pretty epic time to do it.

In the sporting spirit, I also went ahead and booked tickets to the HR derby and MLB All-Star game in St. Louis for me and Craig. It has been far too long since I have been home/been to Busch Stadium/seen all of my HS friends, and I'm very happy to finally have a great excuse to do all of these things!

This spending spree is finally going to be capped off in the next few days with me buying my brother's birthday present. He has been e-mailing me sporadically for the last year or so now somewhat halfheartedly trying to plan a cool outdoors/travel experience, and knowing that he had done a trip like that through REI in the past, I went on their website and was pretty surprised to find they had an incredible selection of trips all around the world at what seemed to be extremely reasonable prices. So I went ahead and gauged both of our fitness levels/interests, and picked out a handful of trips from which I am going to have him pick an adventure for us to do together. My brother is 8 years older than me and not surprisingly we hadn't really started bonding until somewhat recently as I started to mature into his mindset, and I am very excited to be able to do one of the following trips with him:


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/africa/bot.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/latin/fga.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/namer/alaska_kenai.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/namer/awk.html

http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/latin/mlp.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/asia/mon.html (I think that this is my early favorite so far)


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/europe/ireland.html


http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/europe/italy_cinque.html


So yeah, a lot to be excited about lately.


Cheers,
Mike