I told myself that I wouldn't use the blog to whine, but damn. Took a day off after this and am ready to fight back today. Not much else to talk about except I've been thinking about getting a dog, but 99% won't happen cause I'm just not going to want to take care of it. Ok, time to run good.

-Steve

So I am just settling in ater a night of drinking and I've got a few things running through my mind - some more trivial than others.

First off, I just wanted to rant about a mini drinking escapade on wednesday night. I shot over to NY to hang out with some guys that I used to work with and have some food and drinks. We put quite a few back and then one guy started saying "Steve doesn't even need to work anymore, he should buy us a round of shots." Obviously everybody would agree that this is pretty rude and he was fairly drunk when he said it, but it made me think about how my non poker playing friends view me.

To be upfront, I don't make "baller" money playing poker. I make enough to pay all my bills, rent, food, and have money to go out and have some fun, and at the moment, it's nice not to have a boss. But do my friends that I used to work with think that I don't "work" any more and all of a sudden since I don't work for the little money that I used to make at my old job means that I've struck gold in the gambling world? I definitely make more money now, than I did at my job, but it's not like I'm rolling around in hundred dollar bills. It just makes me wonder about what the general public thinks about when they hear people that play poker for a living, because it definitely is work, and it is just irritating to me that people think that I just sit around all day and make money just appear out of thin air so that they can drink for free.

That was a little bit of just a rant, but here's some real food for though. Tonight I was out with my roommate and his brother and we were talking about my summer in vegas for a little bit and we were talking for a little bit about a converstaion I had in Vegas with my editor while sitting in media row at the WSOP. The basis of the converstation is "is poker good for makind?"

My initial reaction was "Of course it's good for mankind." It gets people thinking analytically and strategically and a little gambling is always good for the soul in my opinon. But when you really think about the bright minds that play poker for a living, you wonder whether or not those minds would be better served in some other areas of the world. The Binger brothers are a perfect example. They are bona fide geniuses and they are spending their lives gambling. In my opinon, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and I don't see their lives as a waste, but what does mankind as a whole lose from them playing poker? They might have created some huge scientific breakthrough that could have helped millions of people, but instead they are only benefitting themselves.

Matt Graham is another good example, because if I'm not mistaken he dropped out of medical school with just one year left to his degree to pursue poker full time.

Now as somebody who grinds out their rent money from poker, I am not judging whether or not their decision is the right one, and I am completelly behind anybody who decies to make poker their source of income, and I am not somebody who believes that your job has to benefit society in some way. But I think we can all agree that a doctor is going to be more valuable to the human race than a poker player and how many brilliant potential doctors do we want leaving the medical field to pursue poker?

This is probably a dramatic case, as most doctors are more than likely going to want to be a doctor because they want to help people - although the fat salary probably doesn't hurt either. So it would take one talented player to not want to be a doctor and gamble for a living. But the point is is that good thinking poker players are very bright people, who could very easily be successful in other aspects of life. I'm not saying they would want to be, but there is no doubt that successful poker players are bright enough to do other things. Whether or not those things would make them more money, or benefit society is unique to each individual situation. I don't see what my roommate gives to society working at ING, but most people would look at that as a more respectable job than playing poker (which is a somewhat flawed way to think in my opinon).

I'm not sure whether or not poker is good or bad for mankind, but I haven't formed an opinion yet that is going to make me want to stop playing. At the moment, if I had to make a stand I would say that poker is really neutral for mankind. I knew a guy who used to play for a living and his family wasn't very happy about it and he would tell them "Maybe i'll take a bunch of money off of a doctor who has a gambling problem. He'll be forced to work longer and save more lives than if he had retired earlier." Sure its a far fetched statement, but it makes enough sense for me.

-Steve

My roomates went to Aspen to ski for the week and thats left me alone in my apartment without much human contact for the last couple days. I was going stir crazy in my room on Saturday and I decided that I would shoot up to Mohegan to go play live. I figured it would be a good way to actually talk to other people and still play some poker and more than likely make some money. I ended up making $250ish on the day, but that was with taking some pretty awful beats along the way.

I had ran my stack up to $600 pretty quick after making the nut flush against TPTK (who of course decided to stick in about 200 drawing completely dead) and was hovering around that number for a while when I was dealt to red aces in the cutoff. The only other good player at the table limped in from earlyish position and I made it 12 to go. The sb called and I was limp reraised to 35. The player had another 250 behind, so I decide to 4bet to 1000 and after the sb folded, the other player immediately moves all of his chips in and of course he had KK. He flops a K and I don't hit the resuck to lose a $600 pot.

Later on, I pick up KK after a couple limpers and make it 15 and get 3 calls. The flop was J 3 2 with two c lubs and one of the limpers leads for two dollars (yes, 2 dollars). I make it 50 and he calls after some thought. The A of spades fell on the turn and after he checked I bet 60. I thought that maybe I could still get some value from a J, still charge a flush draw and if he does have Ax of clubs, just get to showdown for my price and just check behind the river. He string c/r me to 120 but obv since it was a string bet, he was forced to just call. The river brought another J and he checked and I check behind and he shows the Ad10c, showing that he just called 40 on the flop out of position with complete air and just gets there on the turn.

Normally in this spot, playing live I just start to steam off the last of my money and end up losing a buy in and going home pissed off. But I was real happy that I just shrugged off these two beats, kept trudging along and made a small profit on the day. On Sunday, when I started playing online again, my tilt control was put to the test as Sunday and Monday I went on one of the bigger downswings I've ever gone on, but managed to keep my cool and make it all back and put myself back in the black for the week. I am really happy with the way I've been playing lately and more happy with the fact that I just haven't been getting mad and tilting during a downswing.

Earlier today, I was 8 tabling some 33s and 55s, completely standard Tuesday afternoon activities, when one of the regs in the 33s asked me if I coached and said he would be interested in taking lessons from me. I've helped out my friends before in learning some sng strategy, but I've never been approached by a complete stranger and been asked for help. I guess I'm gunna give this coaching thing a shot and see how it goes. I've gotten coaching lessons from faarcyde and back in my FR cash days I had sessions with DamnRinger. They were both real good (I would recommend either of them to any1 that is looking for a coach) and I will definitely emmulate some methods they used. The one thing I am wondering about is what should I charge? He would be my first student ever so I don't think I should be super expensive, but at the same time I want to make a little money. Any suggestions?

Gl at the tables and hopefully every1 has had a good start to 2010.

-Steve

I got back from my trip to Carolina earlier in the week and well, new years even was a debacle for me. We started drinking early in the day and I blacked out shortly after getting to the bar - which was at like 9. The last thing I remember is seeing "Minkus" at the bar. For all of you Boy Meets World fans, you guys will know who that is. When I saw him all I was saying was "I wanna meet Cory and Sean." I still think it would have been insanely awesome if he walked in with the whole cast of that show. I think I could die a happy man if I got to party with Mr. Feeney and Eric Matthews haha. For those who maybe didn't have the obsession that I had, here's a clip of Minkus. After seeing him, I don't remember a thing really and one of my drunken escapades later in the night included me passing out in a closet. Don't worry it was a walk-in closet. Needless to say I was pretty hungover the next day.

{CRYOUTUBE v=Z5B-PnDFZek}

The day after we just hung out and went to downtown Wilmington for some food. Nobody really wanted to go out that night so we stayed in and played cranium. I'd never really played before but it was kind of fun to play in a group. It's like a mix of pictionary, charades, and trivial pursuit. Scott and I were partners and originally I thought we were going to be a real bad team, but all in all we were not that bad and we had a decent shot to win at the end.

That's enough of cranium play-by-play. We didn't make that good of time on the way back and got home in just over 11 hours. Since i've been back I've realized just how much I hate the northeast and I can't stand the snow. It was pretty sweet to spend New Years with no snow and some decent weather for January, and it was borderline depressing to come back and see my car covered in snow. I've really just been really trying to just focus on grinding and putting in some sick volume this month. So far this week I've already played 260 games and I'm hoping to get to 450 by the end of the week.

As for some New Year's resolutions, I have a couple that I'll look to stick to. As far as poker goes, I want to be on the leaderboard of the 9-10 hold em non turbo leaderboard on sharkscope for the year and I want to average 1200 sngs a month. My other goals are to lift 4 times a week and do abs 5 times a week. I'm in no means bad shape, but I've only been lifting 3 times a week and running the other 2. So if I just add one more lift a week and make sure I don't get lazy with abs, I'll be happy. I also want to increase the distance I've been running. I've been running 2 miles or so in just under 15 minutes, and I want to able to extend that pace to my old 4 miles, 30 minute mark. Scott is starting to train for a half ironman, so that should give me motivation to increase my pace since my roommate will be doing some pretty intense training.

Hope everybody had a good new year and here's to a good 2010.

-Steve

So my last blog was very woes me and things got a little bit worse before they got better. I ended up with a computer virus and was without my computer for a week while geek squad took forever to fix it. During that time, I was also without my car as it was in the body shop getting the front bumper all fixed up. So for that week I was a mess with no real way to get around and nothing to really do. Thank god for peapod from stop and shop so I was still able to get groceries (best invention ever.)

Once I got everything back, things went better, December was a decent month poker wise, but being without my computer for a week hurt the volume goal that I had set to put in. A couple weeks ago I ran a 5k charity run in new haven with my buddy and a couple of his friends. I was a little disappointed with my time but I'm gunna chalk it up to the weather. Running outside in the middle of december in connecticut isn't exactly ideal conditions for a long distance run. Just under 27 minutes isn't too bad, but when I used to be able to run 4 miles in 30 minutes it just bothers me. It was weird though coming across the finish line and having the new haven brewery giving out samples of their beer. Don't get me wrong, I was all for getting drunk that day, but the last thing I want after a long run is beer and hot dogs. After we all were done with the run we headed to a bar for some lunch and beers and got drunk while watching football all day. Solid Sunday imo.

The charity run was the only major happening so far in december other than going home for Christmas. I went home the night of the 24th. Christmas eve is always a big party with friends and family and christmas day is more of hang-out in pajamas and eat left-overs from the night before. Stayed home the 25th too since the weather was pretty bad and decided to come back on saturday. Had my first experience trying to get a rear-wheel drive car out of a driveway that had been covered with freezing rain - not so much fun. Looks like I'll have to be diligent in checking the weather to make sure I'm not stuck on the side of the road or something. I really hate northeast winters. Hopefully soon I'll get out west.

Looks like I'll be making a road trip with my roommates down to wilmington, north carolina for new years to visit our friends. There are a bunch of people going down there and i think the official count is now at 11 of us crammed into a 3 bedroom apartment. It will be cramped, but it should be fun. As far as I know I got the couch to sleep on, and im fine sleeping on couches. Anyways, looks like I won't be blogging again til after I get back from Wilmington, hope every1 has a good new years.

-Steve

Warning: This is going to be a rant, some poker related, some just related to my stupidity/bad luck in life.

So the past 5 days or so has been prolly the worst stretch of time I've had in a while. Let's just recap my life starting with last wednesday. I played a little bit on the wednesday before Thanksgiving and had a small downswing. I shrugged it off and decided to head back to NY to meet up with my friend to go out for the nite since Thanksgiving eve is typically a good nite to get completely bombed - and thats exactl what i proceeded to do. Me and Danny ran up a pretty big bar tab and of course he didn't have very much money on him so I got stuck with the bulk of the tab.

I crashed at his place for the nite and woke up with what was probably one of my top 5 worst hangovers, and I had to drive back to my place in connecticut to get showered and changed and go hang out with the family for thanksgiving after driving back and forth from danny's to my place, and then to my uncles house in danbury, i was ready to just pass out and felt sick in the stomach from the nite before. I wasn't even able to really enjoy all the food there was to have because of how hungover I was. I sucked it up for a while and said my goodbyes pretty quickly after desert was served.

On my way home, I had to stop off at this girl's house who I have been, I guess you would call it "seeing" (we don't have a title and I want to keep it that way cause things are good as they are). I had left some stuff there from a few nights before and in my tired/hungover state as I was pulling in to park, I just wasn't paying attention and dinged up the front of my car on a wooden pole in front of her apartment. Of course I was super pissed cause now I have to pay for body work to be done to the front bumper of my car just cause I'm anal and want my car to look nice. If I was still driving my old beater, I would have just left it, but alas, I feel the need to spend the money.

On Friday, I put in a fair amount of volume online after I got back from getting an estimate from the auto body shop and I just got absolutely demolished. I put in like 60 sngs or so and was stuck approximately $900, offcially losing all my profit and making me a small loser on the week. So I decided that I was going to stay in Saturday and just grind and make it all back and I just got crushed harder, as I proceeded to get crushed all day. At one point on Saturday i was -$700 for the week. I ended up playing almost all night Saturday and made most of it back and was basically break even on the week.

So I end up sleeping real late on Sunday and I decide to order Chinese food. There was a $20 minimum for delivery and I didn't want to leave the house. So I decide to get this chicken and shrimp dish which I've never had and just thought chicken and shirmp would be good. After about an hour and 20 minute wait for the food, the delivery guy finally gets there and all i had were 100s and 20s, so I gave the guy 2 20s for a $21 order and asked for 15 back. The guy only had a 5 dollar bill, so of course, I get stuck paying $35 bucks for chinese and to top it off the chicken and shrimp was awful and I ended up taking 3 bites of it and throwing it out.

And now today (tuesday), I went to the gym and put my keys and my cell phone in my sweatshirt and put it on a hanger in the locker room and when I was done with my workout all my shit was gone. Some douche bag stole my sweatshirt, my phone, and my keys. He didnt even take my car, it's one thing to jack a nice sweatshirt, but to take my phone and my keys too, it just adds insult to injury. So I had to call the cops, and AAA, and verizon to cancel my phone, and get my car towed back to my apt since it was my only set of keys. So right now, no1 can call me, I can't drive anywhere, and the front of my car is dinged up. FML.

On the bright side, I came out of my downswing and have been doing well since sunday and plan to put in a ton of volume this week, but damn. For those of you that actually read that whole post, you deserve a purple heart cause I just needed a place to vent and figured my blog was a good place to do it.

-Steve

I realized that I hadn't updated the blog in a while and it dawned on me that there has not been much going on in my life that is blogworthy.

I've been putting in good volume this week grinding sngs and this week has gone better than my last two. I had been on like a 350 game breakeven streak, which was by far the longest breakeven streak ive had, but after talking to faarcyde, it's apparently beond standard. From Sunday through now, I've put in just over 200 games, which im happy about and ive started playing more tables at once and have been happy with cascading tables and pulling tables to the side when I get down to the bubble and in the money. While I was breaking even, I was having problem putting in the volume needed cause I would get frustrated that I was not winning. Now that I'm winning again, it's much easier to put in the games, but I need to keep a consistent mindset to keep grinding through variance.

I went up to mohegan with a couple friends to play some live cash games last saturday and I made 320ish in the 1/2 game. I'm sure anybody reading this knows that low limit nl live games are absurdly soft. I made most of my money when I flatted QQ from the bb against an early position raiser. The flop was Q 6 4 rainbow and I c/r'ed his 10 to 40. It seemed that any time he bet, he didn't fold, so I figured start building a pot now. The turn was a 5 and i bet 80 and he tanked and called, leaving himself with just 50 bucks left. I moved him in in the dark and the river was a 6 and he called and later told me he had 77 lol.

Outside of poker, I went back to NY for a surprise party for my dad's birthday and it was the first time that I had told some of my family that I was just playing poker at the moment, and most of them were surprisngly cool with it and kinda interested in it. My uncle had a long conversation with me and was asking questions about bankroll management and what not and by the end said "it seems like you treat this like a business and you pay your bills, so good for you." I didn't know what to expect from certain people, but it all went well, and its always nice to have some of my grandmother's home cooking.


Hopefully I'll have some exciting stuff to blog about soon.

-Steve

So I left Wilmington, NC on Monday night at 815 or so and drove through the night all the way back up to Connecticut and after just over 10 hours of driving and getting back at 630 in the morning, my sleep schedule is officially all sorts of messed up. The trip was great and I really liked the fact that it was almost 80 degrees in November and I was able to hang out on the beach. There are alot of good looking girls down there and the bars were pretty fun and we had a good time going out, and everything is cheaper down there. My friends have a 3 bedroom apartment and pay almost half of what I pay for our 2 bedroom in connecticut. The only downside I can see about the area is that there is nowhere to gamble lol.

I'm sure that sounds pretty degenerate of me but there are some days where I just get sick of grinding in front of my computer and head about an hour up 95 and go play at mohegan. So to sum up my trip, it was a fair amount of drinking, some sun and just overall enjoying time away from the computer and the cold.

As for poker, I played very little on tuesday when I got back, just 7 games because this girl that I've been talking to decided to come over and hang out for a while. But today i put in a lot of volume and just got my dick knocked in. Between yesterday and today I put in 70 games and am stuck $400. Nothing I did worked and nothing held up when it needed to. It will turn around though, I'm running wayyy below expectation and things always turn around in the long run. Just need to keep plugging away and playing good. I plan on taking some time to really go through wiz tomorrow and put some hands in the forums just to make sure I'm not making any mistakes. I tried to put my HEM graph in here from the last two days but I'm a retard and can't figure out how to do it, if any1 knows how, let me know. I'm getting an "invalid file message."

-Steve

So I was browsing the forums the other day when i came across the "october results" thread. I saw all sorts of insanely awesome graphs and watched people talk about how they crushed it for the month of october. October was an alright month where i ran pretty bad and only made about 2k or so. But seeing all of the different graphs made me want to put in some serious volume this month and really crush it and make some serious money. Sure most of the players played cash games, but seeing the amount of hands they put in made me want to put in a ton of games and definitely surpass my 1k games goal.

I was talking to faarcyde today and was asking him about a specific spot i get into in many sngs and when i told him about my results his first response was "dont worry about results... just play ur best and the money will end up in ur account at the end of the month." Its really easy sometimes to become results orientated, and the last two weeks or so i was definitely in the wrong mindset, so for the rest of the month I'm going to make a conscious effort to not think about results and to go over my play and make sure I'm happy with my decisions.

My goals for November:
- 1k+ games
- Top 50 on ftp high stakes sng leaderboard
- use sng wiz to review my play at least 3 times a week and use the quiz before i play 3 times a week

I'll be away for the weekend to head down to wilmington, north carolina to hang out with my old roommates from college. I'm pretty pumped cause I haven't seen her in like a year and a half, I'm just not looking forward to the 11 hour ride that Im gunna make soone enough. I should have a pretty good weekend and I'm also super pumped about the yanks!!!! suck it philly. Hopefully my dolphins will beat the patriots on sunday and it will top off my weekend. Alright, time to pack.

- Steve

So ever since my first entry and my general excitement about the way things are going right now, everything has been going great. On the poker front, I put in pretty good volume and am up just over $700 in the past two days. Today during my first session, I actually ran ABOVE expectation.... I know, doesn't happen often.

Outside of poker, the Yankees finished off the angels and are back in the series. I live with a Red Sox fan, so this is super awesome for me. Baseball has always been a huge part of my life (played my whole life and in college) and I look forward to watching the yanks take home another title. I just wish they were playing the dodgers and not the phillies. Philly has the only lineup that can compare to NY's, but Cole Hamels has been pretty bad this year and once you get past Cliff Lee, I think that their pitching really falls off. Either way, it should be a good series to watch even if you hate the yankees.

I was talking with my roommates (I live with my best friend and his gf... both of whom I lived with in college) and caitlyn, who is a grad student was talking about taking a summer class abroad in Ireland or Barcelona. It got me thinking about how I have never really saw the world. I mean, I've been to Canada once, but never left North America. And no offense to Canadians, but Canada can't really compare Europe. I decided that my new somewhat poker related goal is to make enough money and save up enough cash to be able to take 2-3 weeks next august and go see Europe. I think it would be a great experience and if I can do that, then it also means that I've been crushing it at poker lol. I really want to see Barcelona and London, and Italy is a must. I figure Italy would take a solid week to see everything and I would love to go see a soccer game somewhere along the way. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but Scott (my roommate) is a soccer player and I've grown more of an appreciation for the game since hanging around him in college. Not too mention, I can watch anything when I'm drunk and there is no way, I would not get absolutely plastered for a soccer game in Europe. If anybody has done anything like this, let me know if you have any tips on where to stay, what to do and such.

Congrats to my roommate Scott, idk if he reads this or not, he just got a new job and a hefty pay raise lol maybe now hell actually play poker for more than pennies.

-Steve