I haven't played much poker in the last week; it's currently finals week at DU, and the last 2 weeks of every quarter are always full of projects, exams, and papers... all fun stuff :) I've wanted to play poker every day after finishing my studies, but I've been mentally exhausted. I'm proud of myself for saving X buyins and not having to deal with X^y additional stress. This weekend was a little too much fun, though... I have the biggest room in my fraternity house, and we're on probation (can't party in common areas), so parties were in my room all weekend. They were fun, but some asshole decided to start a fight, and he got his shit tossed. Sadly, his shit was tossed through my coffee table, breaking my egyptian hookah, my bong, and a couple wine glasses in the process. Because the hookah coals smashed all over the floor and some brilliant drunkard decided to step on them to put it out, it looks like I took a blow-torch to my carpet. Shit happens, right?

I have my last final on Friday, then I leave for Vegas the following Monday :D After that, I'll be jumping back into poker head-first. It's nice to balance out poker with a little bit of fun and a whole lot of productivity off the tables, but somehow I miss the grind. 100NL regs, see you in a week or two.

I've been crushing 100NL since a coaching session with Schaffem, but we'll get to that later. I learned something this weekend from some of my non-poker friends that will stick with me for a lifetime.

I live in Colorado, so obv skiing/riding here is a pretty big deal. I drove up to Keystone this weekend with a couple of sick snowboarders. What followed was a persistent sequence of unfortunate events. We left at 8am and hit major traffic on friday; because of an accident, a 1.5 hr drive turned into a 4 hour ordeal. By the time we finally parked around noon, it was a bluebird day (sunny, cloudless) on the mountain. A perfect day for filming... but we forgot the camera.

"Don't let the fact that it's a bluebird day ruin a bluebird day." Thanks, Christine. I was demoing my friend's skis that day, but when I went to adjust the bindings, I quickly found that the screws were stripped to hell and there was no fitting my boots in there. Fuck. By the time I rented gear (-$50, gotta love on-mountain prices), it was 1pm. We made the most of 3 hours, though, and shredded pretty hard. When lifts closed, we headed back to the car, only to find that my friend's car keys and wallet were missing. They had to have fallen out on the chairlift. 2 hours later, a spare was delivered, and we headed to boulder for some much-needed relaxation (read: to get hammered).

The night in Boulder was a huge bust. We were staying at the Sigma Nu house, and there was a raging party next door, but we couldn't go. Any brother from sig nu would be fined $100 for going... bleh. If you know anything about college greek life, it's that everyone is constantly on probation/suspension/oversight, and having fun is either illegal or expensive. We planned on waking up at 6am the next day, so we tried to pass out on the comfy hardwood floor, which would have been easy if not for the voice of an angel next door. Did I say angel? I meant black-out drunk, obscenely loud sorostitute with serious emotional problems, wailing about her awful life as a rich daddy's girl who spends her time getting wasted and sleeping with random dudes to compensate for the fact that her father didn't hug her enough as a kid. Maybe I'm a little bitter. Sleep is important to me.

No one slept, but we did get to the mountain early, ready to make up for a rough night with a great day of riding. On the first run through the park, Mike (guy who lost his keys) didn't get enough speed for the kicker he was hitting, threw a backkflip, and landed on the knuckle, blowing out his knee in the process. Mike taught me something today: he lost a wad of cash, was prohibited from partying with his own brothers, and had his 2011 X Games hopes snapped along with a couple of important tendons in his left knee. And when we picked him up at the hospital, he was still smiling, goofing around with his friends, and enjoying life. What's a 10BI downswing at the next level up compared to that?

I'm going to remember Mike's lesson every bad beat and cooler I take, and in every downswing I find myself in. Nothing that can happen in a poker game is worth being unhappy over. For now, I find myself in the midst of a nice upswing. My play has improved, and I'm running pretty awesome over 13k hands in february: 5.6BB/100. My goal for March is to put in double that volume with a winrate >1BB/100. Whether or not I reach that goal, I'm not going to let some variance ruin my love for a high-variance game.

(skip first paragraph if you don't care to read my personal ramblings)
I've come to a realization in the past month or so that definitely shouldn't have taken me until my junior year to figure out. College is easy, but I've been making it difficult. It takes simple actions, like doing projects/homework ahead of time (and before blunt o'clock, but that's a different story) and communicating with professors to succeed. LDO. Poker, on the other hand, is hard, but I've been trying to make it easy. It takes serious analysis, both of myself and anyone who is/will consistently be at my tables, more study time than any upper-level statistics course I'm taking, and some serious emotional discipline. For a bipolar person, the last one is a constant challenge. Breaking even, like getting B's and C's, is unacceptable to me, so it's time to use the abundant free time of a college student to put in the work necessary to succeed. That brings me to my goal for February: attain a 1ptbb winrate in the 25k-30k hands I'll end up playing. Obviously, there are many smaller goals that will help: post-session reviews of more than just big pots, discussing hands in the poker group as well as on CR, and going beyond simply watching videos. As it turns out, taking notes isn't endemic to classes. None of these are epiphanies; I've "known" all of them for months, but it's taken this long to truly internalize them.

On a lighter note, my first trip to LV is quickly approaching. I'll be there from March 15-19; if anyone's in town that week, chilling with CR members would be a lot of fun. Hit me up. I'm going with some non-poker friends, so this trip isn't exactly based around poker, but I still plan on getting some hours in at 1-2NL. Everything I've heard has me salivating for these games, so obv I'm pretty excited. I'm staying at Circus Circus (ghetto, right?), but I really don't foresee spending too much time in the room, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. For the people who have been, I hear Nevada has some pretty strict laws on herbal use. Is smoking in Vegas a bad idea? I just can't picture going to something like Cirque de Soleil without being adequately prepared.

These next couple of months have the potential to be awesome: it's the heart of ski season in Colorado, I'm going to Vegas in a month, school is finally going well, and I'm feeling confident that my poker game is on the upward slope. What more can a 21 year old ask for?

Today's youtube vid: some marijuana use required.

I've been slacking on reviewing my play and compiling my thoughts on poker into something coherent, so now seems like a good time to start blogging again. This is mostly for me, but I'll try to keep it at least relatively entertaining/useful to readers.

A little about myself: I've been a CR member on and off for about a year, and I'm currently playing 100NL@FTP. I try to balance this with college classes (at the University of Denver) and some semblance of a social life in my fraternity (Kappa Sigma). Recently, I started coaching with Mike (schaffem111) ... hopefully it'll help to get me out of this breakeven funk.

Next time I'll include some poker content... today, we'll just end it with some Three-Six in Wonderland

I haven't posted in a while, but only because I don't feel like blogging about beats, coolers, and "running bad". January makes 2 losing months in a row. I haven't even played in Feb yet. As poorly as I've done in poker over the last 2 months, life itself has been worse. This weekend, I stayed in bed until 5pm every day, and not because I was out late the night before. The human brain is a pattern recognition super-computer, and mine recognized the following: When I wake up, bad shit happens.

As of now, I hate just about every aspect of being me. Until this changes, there's no way I can play my A game, so obv I have to fix this. I don't know when I'll be back, only that I will come back to fulfill my poker dreams. Until then, I hope all of my poker friends will stay in touch over skype (as long as you don't mention the word poker to me;) ).

In the words of Streetlight,
Fuck it, thank you, I love you all.

Charlie

I didn't play poker all weekend, and it turned out pretty well. I still spewed about $100, but this time it was for energy shots and party favors, not tilty plays and high-variance stack offs. The X games were happening in Aspen, so a couple of my brothers and I went up to Keystone to avoid the crowds and get some runs in. It snowed for 3 days straight, so we had some powder to play in.

Shot from the crotch cam:





We're not ducking lines, I swear!


We had 2 epic days of this, and they definitely made up for the 12 hours I had to spend in a glass room being interrogated by people who are supposed to be my brothers. All this for one party off campus?! All in all it was a pretty damned good weekend, and the skiing's only going to get better :D

Really. I finally grinded my roll back up to 3k after withdrawing for books and drinking money (that I still don't have yet, die FTP). So I took another shot at 100NL, and it went really well for about 1500 hands, winning 2-3 BI's in that span. For the rest of the hands, I'll let the graph speak for itself:



Most of my losses (3BI at 100NL) were to the single worst player I have ever played against. Then, I managed to find one of my favorite fish playing CAP 1/2, and obv couldn't beat 95s to save my life. It's harder to write off variance when it happens during shots at higher limits, rather than in the middle of your current limit. After a while, it starts to feel like some kind of deity hates you, but I guess that's the brilliance (or ignorance, depending on perspective) of the human mind: we can blame all of the stuff that goes wrong on some kind of higher power while taking full credit for our successes. I debated living the rest of my life with the sole goal of spiting whatever deity may exist, but it seems pretty logically stupid. If there is a God (in the Christian/Jewish/Muslim sense), I'd be thoroughly screwed at the end of this short life (if I'm not already.... there's probably something in the bible about making fun of other people's deficiencies). If there isn't, I just wasted the short time I had on this planet.

Instead, I'm taking a break for a couple of days to hang out with my friends, ski, and get these brotherhood reviews done.

Hoping no one else decides to start wars with imaginary omnipotent beings,
Charlie

Or at least that's what the sign behind my monitor says. I quit 3 days ago, so it's safe to say I'm clear of addiction, right? Talking about them is really making me want one, so moving on... today's session was pretty amazing. My second monitor came in today, so I loaded up 8 tables on FTP and crushed for a couple hours, making ~8BI in 1500 hands. On to some hands:


weaktight.com/702896 PLHE is sooo much fun :)

weaktight.com/702899 Villain here was a bad reg with an ego. When he raises river, A8s is the only hand he could actually have, since he's not good enough to be doing this for thin value w/ 2 pair or even a set. I also can't see him check/calling 2 streets OOP with a set, so he's pretty much down to A8s, and I'm not convinced he check/calls 2 streets with that. Pretty easy call IMO, but he spent the next 20 minutes berating me. God I love the micros :d

weaktight.com/702903 Another bad reg, and I'm still a station on the river. He was a pretty aggro player, so I didn't think he'd c/c 2 streets with a FD, or slowplay something like a set on such a scary board. Once again, I just don't give him credit for being good enough to get thin value here. Once 50NLers prove to me that their river 7/8potting range isn't polarized to the nuts or their missed draws, I'll stop making these calls.

weaktight.com/702906 This is my hand butchery of the day. IMO I should be folding turn here 100%... hopefully the public humiliation caused by posting this hand here will make me never want to do this again :)


That's all I have for interesting hands, the rest are pretty standard. It feels good to be able to 8table comfortably again, and my play's finally improving again, after about a month of stagnation. My coach pointed out that the marginal/bad decisions/betsizes I make are usually caused by acting too quickly, so I've been working on taking my time with decisions/bet sizing. The turn play on hand #4 above was the only instance of it this session, so I'm getting better.

I'm also making a conscious effort not to let anything get under my skin in poker and in life. It's harder than it sounds. Ever hit your head against a pointy shelf? It's pretty hard not to curse once or twice. Anyway, I'm going to go enjoy the one time in my life where it's socially acceptable to be belligerently drunk... for 4 years straight.

Peace,
Charlie

It feels good to get into a poker rhythm again, but probably even more so because I crushed today. It was an odd situation where I ran super hot preflop (playing 50/40 after 100 hands at one table, I just kept getting hands) and just ran over 3/4 of my tables. Some hands from today:

www.pokerhand.org/ 300bb pot against 2 huge fish (the 2 reasons I was playing PL)

www.pokerhand.org/ A strange dynamic against a 40/10/8 fish at the table where I was playing 50/40; whenever I raised his limp, he would insta3bet and lead for pot, every time.

www.pokerhand.org/ One orbit later, the final result of said dynamic.


Would have been a sick session without 2 coolers in my first 10 hands, (set over set and KK
I'm feeling very well balanced atm; I haven't missed a class yet (OK, it's been 5 days, but still, that's an achievement), went skiing up at Breck yesterday, and I'm still getting hands in. Life can be good when it's not shitting on your hopes and dreams :)

I haven't felt much like blogging lately, because I haven't felt much like thinking about poker. I've been running pretty horrendously for the past 2 months or so: 6 days of breakeven or losing play, 1 heater. Rinse, Repeat. I've never been so depressed about being up 9 BIs. The final straw came about 10 days ago; I was playing this maniac fish HU at 50NL, and I just couldn't hold vs. him. I lost 4BI's due to him luckboxing, then lost the last hand because I actually thought to myself, "Fuck it, I can't win at this game" and called A high on the river when it was OBVIOUS he had at least top pair. Tilt like that really scares me, so I stopped playing. I don't want to be out of control.

The problem is, I really can't take a break from poker right now. It's all I have to do in this god-forsaken state (Maine sucks, if you're here for more than a week, you will begin to hate life guaranteed). So I watched Jackal's SNG series, withdrew $1k, and started grinding the $20 9 man's with my remaining roll. I'm still running awful, but it's pretty much impossible to tilt in these things, especially when you're playing 15 of them at once.

I'm planning on getting back to cash games in January when I get back to school, if I feel ready for it. Luckily, I have a very supportive coach, or I wouldn't be considering cashgames whatsoever.

Outside of the poker world, it's my birthday! Hooray. I don't think I've ever been so bleh for my birthday, but that's probably a mix of this awful state and the fact that I'm turning 20. At 20, you lose the excuse, "But I'm just a teenager", and gain absolutely nothing. As the judge told me, consuming alcohol is still "immoral" for 20 year olds. Another year to enjoy, I guess.


asdfhjsdaf,
Charlie