Played some more 2/5 last night, lost ~700, lots KK vs AA where i squeeze and get it in vs a 450 stack my first sb, made me super happy. Made a pretty crappy call with QJ on QQT97 where I think i should be bluffraising/folding vs some kinda nitty weak tight guy who donked 3 vs me and river brought a flush. He bet 100 into 425 or something, kinda figured he had a crap Q alot and some random straights some, and never a boat so found my self in a funny spot. Still think shoving is +ev seeing as he limped pre (had been raising some big hands AJ+) so KQs and AQ are not in his limp call range as well as TT. Also he has folded and shown hands like AK vs Cib raises on Axxr and stuff like that so he is capable of folding a straight/flush I think here just about always. I think its close cuz for him to have a Q he needs like QT-Q6s type stuff and I dunno if he as Q6s very often, and I think he has more weirdo combo drawy type stuff that gets there.

But to go on to my title, i got moved to the main game pretty quick and it became so bad. I was raising blind from the button/co and sometimes even more and cbetting 1/2 pot every single time because there were sooooooo many hands that were just folded pre and then so many folds on the flop. hardly any that got past the flop. Which sucked cuz naturally I was stuck like 500 at this point and couldnt do anything but win $10-20 pots, so frustrating. I got coolered pretty bad all night to and got QQ v AA twice, KK vs AA once, Q9 vs 44 on Q94 (bluffed river and won this one), so bad. Q9 hand was probably all sorts of spew tbh. I raised some clown who stabbed every flop 5 way, the guy who stacked me with AA vs KK 3bet me small-20-70-150, so i decided to peel one which is probably just not good vs him, altho at this point he had raised me a bit and stuff (was a mega crappy nit who had been active and I did not know he was mega passive nit at this point), turn was Js putting a flush out and he checks back and i'm like guaranteed 44 here, so I bluff on 6s river and get the fold, pretty easy obv altho maybe not a good idea to keep trying to bluff people off sets, I was thinking he had either TJs or 44 liek 100% so folding might be best but I also thought I had some bluffing potential on some spades and KTJ8 sometimes altho I think this is a terrible idea in reality. I got luckky on the run out, I'm pretty confident on the Js he still wouldnt fold unless i donked turna nd jammed river, altho in this hand I like that alot given he cant have TJs anymore, but might just be a terrible idea. too FPS to try to fold people off sets with so little equity. Live can get so boring and I think i needed to either leave the game or just grind it out, but I mean when there are ~3 pots an hour over 20bb its pretty ridiculous.

I'm still getting a feel for the games, and I think the must move thing is quite annoying, but I don't know. Not much I can do.

I'll probably not play at all this week. Busy all week, going to a Yankees game on Wednesday, memorial day is this weekend so obviously gotta do the BBQ/party thing assuming it doesnt rain.

-I need to do some serious thinking about my future now tho, I don't enjoy live poker very much, some times its ok, but days like yesterday just make me annoyed and bored and seems like a waste of time. My issue tho is that I need 5-10k probably within the next three years to make sure I have enough to get thru the pre reqs/living etc. since I can't get financial aid other than loans unless i'm getting a masters/phd since I already have a degree, and if I go to school getting a normal job seems like a bit much and I am not working at Mcdonalds getting ~$8 an hour, i'd be better off doing many other things than that. So if i can manage to find an internship or a temp job that is related to fiance or soemthing like bio or chem or biotech or biochem, that would be ideal, or maybe something that pays 1/2 decent, but that is obviously tough to find.

I am also still coaching PLO my graph is in one of my previous posts. I can only accept payment via paypal right now. But if you are interested check out my other blog post and feel free to pm me.

Played some 2/5 yesterday, played maybe 1.5 hours at mohegan and won 420. I was planning on playing 4+ hours only cuz I haven't played poker in a long time and felt like playing. Plus I was playing pretty good and felt comfortable, but when the chance to do something else arose I kinda picked up and left. Well I was at a must move table and when it was my turn to move I just figured it would be a good time to quit. I didn't play many crazy hands. Won a bunch of small pots, played AK like a pussy vs a nit and got paid off on the river. Made one bluff vs a weak tight clown on KK9 where i raised 15 ~4handed on the button with T7, $15 cbet, he donks 40 on a J turn completing the rainbow and I make it $110 to go and he tank folds. But he seemed really weak tight and I have a couple outs I suppose, dynamics seemed right and he is never huge there so that made me happy. Dunno how much I'll get to play, if I don't get hung over tommorrow morning and I can wake up before 10 am i'll try to play the $1200 main event at Foxwoods, but I feel like chances of that are probably pretty slim. It was funny, Mohegan had one main game of 2/5 running and a must move table. I was at the must move. Foxwoods updates there tables online and they had 8 2/5 and 4 5/10 running, dunno if its cuz of the megastack series or if its cuz its foxwoods. But I like mohegan better. Dealers are more fun, atmosphere is a bit better, and its closer to me by 15 minutes. Altho the mohegan customer service guys are terrible and foxwoods are awesome, almost like FT v PS support.

Live poker is such a grind for me but I think I need to try to give it a few shots to either prepare a bit for vegas (only there for 5 days, 2 of which aren't going to be possible to do anything), or to just get used to the CT casinos. I think people are right when they say 5/10 live is liek .5/1 online. People make so many mistakes, especially bet sizing or calling off tons and folding to small bets when they brick the river. I made 2 small bet sizing mistakes wehre I should have bet maybe $10 more or so, but I am still learning live and I'm ok with the mistakes as long as I recognize them. I found it much easier to just announce my raise size so I don't mess up the math or anything. The games were probably softer than 1/2 online when I played that a while back, I could cbet 1/2 pot and get folds and pot with made hands and get calls. People are so fit or fold and the ones that play back/have a clue are so easy to pick out. I think I won one pot over $200, two over 100 and the rest were me betting flop and or turn and winning a HU pot. Easy game when that happens. Obviously ran good to get those situations but when you see old asian guy insta mucking to any bet, and always calling from the BB, it makes so much sense to raise every button and bet every flop. so awesome.

I may try to go back to school and play poker, 2 days of class 2-3 days of poker to make a little of money on the side. 2/5 is deffinately crushable and not nearly as boring as 1/2. I figure I have enough money to get by for awhile so going back to school will let me take classes I want to take and get a masters/phd in something that I think is more useful than finance, and maybe online will come back around during that time. Who knows. Altho if online comes back I am not gonna try to play full time, you miss out on so much by sitting behind a computer all day and at this point its tough to get people to travel with you. Nobody has time/money anymore and like i've always said travelign alone is no fun.

I'm pumped for June. I am going to a wedding in Sonoma on the 10th, going wine tasting the 11th, hanging out in San Fran for a few days and then going to vegas till the weekend. I'm going with my girlfriend and brother so it should be a good time. Dunno if I'll get to play poker, and I won't play any WSOP it seems cuz there is a $1500 on that thursday I think, but I feel bad about leaving my girl friend on her own for a day or hopefully more and it would be her birthday on friday so can't leave her alone for that... But maybe I'll grind out 2/5 or 5/10 for a couple hours since I've never played poker in vegas before.

I've also started coaching. Booked a few sessions. I'm kind of excited since I haven't played PLO in a month now and I think I understand it quite well at this point. I missed coaching a bit, but graduating and then trying to grind full time just made no sense to coach. But now that I can't play online I get to coach again. Yay. I'm charging $30 and hour, but there are packages and my results in my last blog if you are interested.

So if you are interested in some coaching pm me here, Like i said I am going to california/vegas in the middle of June, but we can schedule around that.

Best of luck at whatever everyone is doing.

Thought I'd make a post about this. I'm coaching PLO now for $30 an hour. Packages of 5 hours for $140, and we can work something out for more hours. I'm american so I can't do site transfers for payment, so I'll have to do paypal I think.

I suck with this stuff, so here is a link of my hands since October 15,2010, when I quit work and stopped playing, it works out to a ~4bb/100 winrate mostlyy at .5/1 and 1/2. With some HU and some 2/4. A good portion in the middle is me playing 50bb stacks trying to grind out VPP bonuses at the end of 2010. So my winrate at the other games is a bit higher than 4bb. Also, I was very new to PLO, so there is obviously a learning curve for me and I have been improving substantially over the past few months until the US stopped allowing online poker.

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=16m8vuo&s=7

-You can also PTR me on PS Llama88. Full tilt does do tracking for small stakes PLO, altho all of that info what be HU anyway.

In case anyone was wondering I was making much much more than this per hour, but seeing how I hate live poker, can't play poker, and am really bored I thought I'd throw out this offer, if I get tons and tons of intrest I'll have to bump up the price, but as of now I think this is what works for me. Right now I have nothing going on, other than a trip to Cali/Vegas in the middle of June, I am free. With this time I'm planning on doing something, altho I am trying to figure that one out right now, so in the mean time I thought I would offer super cheap coaching to keep my self occupied, and hopefully I can keep my mind fresh on the game and I'll have something to do.

Obviously payment could be tricky so if you are interested pm me and we can talk.

Now with that out of the way I'll give a little life update on what I'm doing since poker went away. I took a shot at 1/2 NL for the sake of playing (kinda feeling broke altho I'm not and now i have access to PS money which is wehre most of my bankroll is). I wanted to play some new games, but foxwoods only has up to 5/10 PLO8 and occasionally runs 150/300 HOE games and stuff, but thats way to big to learn at or to jump up to. Mohegan customer service is retarded and useless and won't talk to me about anything poekr related so I'm not going down there, and this sucks cuz mohegan is 10 minutes closer to me than foxwoods. But anyway I got in a fight with my brothers friend a couple weeks ago, so my body was hurting a bit from that, and hurting enough where I didn't feel comfortable sittling/sleeping for a while. Now I'm all better, minus a hurt rib (hoping its not cracked), so I might start playing again, but I doubt it.

Im considering going back to school/taking classes/working a corporate job making 40-50/yr. All of which kinda make me sad. Ideally I would try to start a business, but I am by no means rich and don't really have any great ideas right now. I think I am gonna wait till after my trip to cali/vegas this summer to make any real decisions. It will give me time to find/interview for jobs or enroll in classes/decide what to take, etc.

I'm pretty lost without poker. I have a few years worth of living expenses i guess saved and I would like to do some traveling, but going alone seems boring to me. So I don't know about that as an option, unless I take more classes abroad. My only concern is that I already have a degree in finance and I woudl have to see how transfering credits work and all that jazz, plus I hate class and have no idea if I could stick it out again. Its tough for me to learn. I like to learn on my own, without teachers/busy work, but it is hard for me to force myself to learn. For example I tried to learn spanish maybe 2 years ago. Bought some programs and stuff, but After the first summer, I quit doing it and now I know random words, but would be lost if i was in a spanish speaking area. So i don't know. I'm debating a lot of things, and life is kinda looking bleak as of now for me. I'm hoping time will help me figure out what I want to do. The dumbest thing is I have no idea what I want to do. So I'll give myself the next two months of being bored and hopefully figure it out. If it was a bit earlier in the year I would have even been able to make a few bucks coaching baseball at my old high school, but now, I don't even have that option. So I will see what is up, and hopefully figure somethign out.

Also one last thought about my coaching rates. I'll give $2 off your next hour of coaching if you refer some one who books 1--3 hours. And $5 off if they do 4-10, and a free one if they book 10.

I hope some people take advantage of this situation and decide to get some cheap coaching in. If its not from me, from other coaches who are coaching beacuse they can't play.

That's all for now.

-Steve

Played at foxwoods yesterday. My body hurts from sitting there so long. I lost -300 playing 1/2 got stacked ocne all in on the turn T8dd vs AKdd on 823dd9, river Jd. Then lost JJ vs 55 on 467r. I played well, ran well in the sense i made hands, but in my two biggest pots got unlucky. I was annoyed i didn't get to play any 5/10 PLO8. I got on the list but had plans for the night so wanted to just jump in and play so i tested the waters at 1/2. All in all it was a annoying trip because i lost, my body hurts and i came out smelling liek smoke. But hey, i'll take a few more shots, hopefully playing some 5/10 plo8 to get the experience, and its gotta be super juicy.

I played really well I think, running some decent bluffs and stealing effectively, granted it was 1/2 live and a joke, but I haven't played NL seriously in over a year so it felt good to not be lost in hands and stuff.

I'm not sure whether or not playing live is bad for the online poker economy. As the governmetn could see land based casinos have bigger profits which would gie them less incentive to regulate online poker. But who knows, i want to learn these mixed games and this is my only way.

I also spent my FTP points for the first time ever and got a couple of speakers some head phones and a GPS for my mom. Finally had a reason to spend them so yay, my laptop gets real speakers.

Also my friend who I was gonna teach is obviously not getting taught anymore since there is really no point.

best of luck guys. HOpefully we can get our money and stuff

Probably what everyone already knows, but:

We apologize for the delay in responding to your email.

Unfortunately we are unable to immediately process cashout requests for US
players as a result of the legal developments in the United States. We are
making it a priority to work with the relevant authorities to secure the
return of funds as soon as possible. We will promptly provide you with
additional information as soon as it becomes available.

At this time we can not give any word on cashouts made prior to last Friday.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your
patience.

This is my annoying post i guess about the whole mess that everyone seems to have a comment. I'm pretty stressed out right now, having quit my job in october and having 1/2 my net worth spread across PS/FTP, its pretty scary knowing that I don't have a mega safety net any more. A good chunk of my money is invested as well, so my liquid cash is <20k, which is pretty damn scary for me right now. I am already missing poker, and was even playing some play money PLO8 and Stud8 which are two games that I have been trying to learn, but have not palyed any real money games for the most part. PLO8 is pretty easy for me coming from a decent PLO back ground, altho some equities are interesting for me, and I do have to learn, and while it is tough to play real people, I have been watching some videos and 2 tabling on the side and nitting it up and seeing if I can play a decent strategy and do decent. I live 20 minutes from Mohegan/Foxwoods and I'm planning on playing some of those games down there as well as some 2/5 NL if I feel the itch to play big bet games. There are also a few tournaments that I guess i can try to play down there. On wednesday I will be taking my first shot at live PLO8 i think. Mohegan has a nice little nightly so I might try to swing by during the day, grind some 5/10 PLO8 if its running or maybe some 2/5 or something. I may/may not have plans for the night so depending on my plans I will probably try to play that tourney as a little 5k score would be huge for me.

The next question one might ask is why don't i just go get a job. Well, I am fairly opposed to crappy jobs atm and am trying to learn some stuff on my own right now which working a 9-5 would kinda interfere with. Additionally I don't know if i want to stick around this area which getting a job would force me to do, and I may/may not have plans to go on a few vacations (working out the details) which would take place during the summer, so again, getting a job now would make it difficult to do any of these things. So for the time being I am crossing my fingers and hoping my money will be accessible and that online poker will get figured out.

I guess there is also a small chance i can just run super hot playing live, and get to win a few tournaments or something, one of my potential vacations is to vegas following a wedding in california in june which means that I could play the WSOP, however I am absolutely not rolled to play much of anything at the time, i guess i could just play a 1k or something, or grind some live cash while out there, but there isnt really much i can do atm. So hopefully things do work out. I think I might try to update my progress on the horse games just for fun, and if games ever do come back I'll have a good amount of expereince at the mixed games which woudl be nice. Problem is that the highest limits that run alot are only 20/40 for PLO8 and Stud, holdem has some 5/10 10/25 on some days, and right now foxwoods has a 150/300 mixed game goiing, so I do have a bit to shoot for. I'm pretty excited to see how this all goes, however it sucks. I was thinking that live poker you get something liek 20 hands an hour maybe? maybe 30 at NL, probably less at the stud games, altho they might move fast since it is limit. Anyway, I was playing~500 hands an hour plaing online. So that means its gonna take me 25 times longer to really learn the game since getting hands/experience is a good chunk of the battle in learning poker. Also, itll be really difficult to do alot of off the table work since I wont have many hand histories to share with people, so it will really be me watching videos and playing some boring old live poker. the thing that I am trying to do is keep my self entertained with a new game, and this way the grind of live poker wont be too boring for me.

Im relatively excited for this, and it has some potential in being pretty fun and profitable. My problems now is that I have no idea if I am +/- ev at the games I'm gonna try to play. But hopefully I will be +ev or learn very very quickly.

Felt like writing a blog today for w/e reason. Its now been almost a year since i graduated, 6 months since going pro, and 1/4th of the way thru the new year. I really haven't done anything exciting in terms of poker/real life, etc. Almost moved out to vegas to buy a house, almost moved to arizona for the summer, almost did alot of things...Anyway I'm still stuck wehre i was last time, beating some 1/2 PLO online and living back home. I'm really just lacking confidence right now, I had I think my biggest straight out cash game day ever (or top 3 for sure) on sunday, jsut to have my biggest cash game losing day ever yesterday, both were 15+buyin days, I'm still up on the month, but I had a little downer at the end of last month so I still have that in the back of my head. Yesterday I played like a tard and ran super bad, Got 3 outed on the river in a 3way all in for a 600bb pot, had KK on KQ22J, river gives ATh the royal, that one made me sad. I didn't even tilt from that which I guess is the one good thing to take away from that. But the swings in the last week or so have been insane. So I decided to do something to help clear my mind a bit.

One of my friends from highschool is currently unemployed and is probably gonna be my roomate if I move out somewhere fun and exciting, so I figured what better way to make some money for the both of us and get to iterate myt houghts. So i'm teaching a kid who played some $5-$10 dollar sit and goes on empire/in home games all of 5 years ago and hasn't thought of the game at all. Also I am going to teach him PLO since this is obviously my main game and I would be too rusty to teach him hold'em. I think If it was ap erfect world I'd have him take up tournaments and try to get help from some tournament friends to hope he can get shit together for the scoop and luckbox a win or something (highly unlikely but seems like a good way to play with variance). So seeing as he really has no idea about anything, I get to start from scratch. Probably gonna try to do alot of teaching from now-the weekend before staking him a bit. And today he gets to sit in on me playing a session. This tends to be super good for me too because I will have to go through the basics and think about the game which will help to prevent me from auto piloting which will hopefully=$$$. If all things go to play, hoepfully i will be adding another poker mind into my life which would me sick. This is clearly an experiment, but since i don't play on FTP as much as I used to, I figured I can put some to good use. If i don't get lazy I'll throw up some updates, probably gonna start him with $1k at .1/.25 and see how we do. Fortunately he doesnt even have an account there yet so I won't post any of that yet. And hopefully in a few months he will be kicking my ass at MSPLO.

-best of luck

After having a terrific start to the year, I went on a ~25 buyin downer in ~3 days of playing. This was obv very discouraging. It was a combination of tilting, playing non fish HU and running bad. One session I lost every pot over 200bb which was insane, I won the 200bb flips, lost the 400 bb ones, so frustrating, or ran into stupid hands where both hands are standard to get it in, but just terrible some of the stuff I was shown and losing to. Anyway, I figured I would stop the HU matches for the time being and grind out the 6 max. I have been struggling to find a niche these days and have had decent results at a few games, but no spectacular results like I used to have at NL, this is probably to be expected since I had more experience and was further along the learning curve in NL, but at this point I feel like I should go on a mega tear and crush souls.

Today I had a solid session, I started off down three buyins and almost called it quits for the day but got the itch to play and booked a nice win and ended up on the day. I ran really good and won a few all ins twice with the run it twice thingy in spots where I was not a mega favorite. Also won with AA vs AA AIPF, but I do think I played pretty well (made two dumb mistakes altho one might not have been terrible, still debating.)

Funny fact is that last year around this time I went on a 30 buyin downer...maybe I just suck playing in the winter. I'm gonna blame the snow for tiring me out and messing up my days. This snow has been insane and we allegedly have had the most snow in the country. We have had two storms where we got more than twenty inches, the papers said both were over 25 inches...Our snow blower sucks and is old and gets clogged up when there is so much snow and I have to shovel ½ of it anyway. My body has been in pain for weeks now and we are supposed to get more snow. I'm so tempted to pack up and move to Arizona or somewhere warmer without snow.

Now that I lost so much as of late and have had my confidence crushed a bit I dunno where I am headed this month. If I have a half decent week, I'll play the main even at foxwoods on Saturday since I have some friends headed down to play, but if I break even/lose this week shelling out another 1200 in some stupid live donkament seems like a bad idea. Same kinda goes with the FTOPS, I haven't checked out the schedules or anything but if they are multiple entries and stuff, I am not gonna play considering my downswing, but if I have a decent week, I might take a random shot or two to try to bink a 6 figure score.

I will update this weekend if I play some live poker, but if not, good luck at the tables.

Considering how much I played at the end of 2010, this year has started off slow I guess. Part of that is voluntary because I have found that I have many sessions where I win for the first half and then slowly lose it back, so I think I often lose my concentration as the sessions go on and I end up playing pretty poorly towards the end. So with that in mind I have been playing a lot of sessions that are ~1 hour, and many times less than two hours. Funny enough I have actually had good results in all but one of my marathon sessions, these tend to be me playing 2 tables tho while grinding a MTT that I got stuck in. I am not sure what I want to do with MTTs, I had thought them to be fun and exciting on Sundays, but now with FT and their crazy Multiple entry thing, I feel at even more of a disadvantage when playing the Sunday majors where the regs can play 6 times and I don't think that I want to play a a couple $1200 MTTs on a regular basis. Also, I am down close to $1800 this month from playing on Sundays, which I guess isn't too bad, but I clearly suck at MTTs and get raped pretty hard.

PLO has been going great. I've been playing really well, plugging leaks and trying to not spew too bad. I only managed to play 15577 hands this month (maybe a bit more tonight if I get bored) which is pretty pathetic considering that this is my main source of income and all that nonsense. But hey, if my results are going to be better when my volume goes down, it is definitely more enjoyable that way. I managed to crush this month with ~18bb/100 winrate, and running super hot when I took a shot at 2/4, I also crush .01/.02. I was trying to fix my hud on FT and had some .01/.02 tables up so I could mess around a bit and I have a 678.57bb/100 winrate at 6max and 1650.00/100 at HU, pure domination!! But at my main game I have an okish win rate, nothing too special, been doing pretty well at HU which is nice and probably more fun, but I don't like playing too much HU during the week for some reason, probably because I would end up hit and running people because I don't wanna play long sessions, but on weekend with MTTs going on its easier for me to sit and play some HU matches. Without rakeback/MTTs, I had my best month in close to a year, deffinately my best since I stopped playing NLHU, definitely my most profitable month in terms of my main game type thing. Back in the day my best months were always when I had a half decent month but then people I was staking had good months. I really wanna start backing again, but with the state of legislation I kinda get scared, so I guess that will have to wait until I either win a Sunday major or legislation figures itself out.

Most of my mega fun hands are in previous posts, so I'm not going to post any, altho I lost a 450bb pot today which was annoying, got it in after a 4way 3bet pot with a double gutter and the NFD vs top set, not too much that can change there unless I feel like checking back the flop, which might have been ok, but probably not given some stacks.

My life goals are going pretty well I guess. Stock market has finally not bent me over and screwed me, I've started to learn Spanish again, altho I basically made myself restart from the beginning since its been over 1.5 years since I was studying seriously.

I am still debating the foxwoods megastack series. Kinda sucks its on superbowl weekend, but I guess I can just go down Friday morning (if I can wake up early enough to make it this time) and win. Who knows, I'll probably flake and try to find something else to do. Its tough because I hate playing live unless I'm drinking, and then it causes problems because I have to some home drive and then I get made fun of for being the drunk kid at the table. Altho I make some sick calls while hammered, last time I sat at ½ at like 3 in the morning and made the 9 hi call for the win and then the A hi call for the chop, the later was so depressing, shoulda reshoved to get the win, I was sitting there laughing at my buddy who was trying to bluff me and knew he had nada...terrible play by me!!!

If anyone is actually going to foxwoods to play the series, maybe you can convince me to go, altho I'd porbably just rather go and go out, foxwoods is always a good time (I really hope its not at Mohegan, Mohegan is much less fun imo). Best of luck in feb.

This year has been very very swingy for me. I didn't start playing until the second week of January and since I have played ~13k hands. All of my play has been at 1/2 PLO, mostly 6max, wiht some random HU Scattered in. I've also dabbled a bit in tourneys, with not major cashes, mini cashed the million, bustoed everything out, altho I am kinda deep in some nightly $50 tourney, maybe I can get a run good one time. The most I've ever won from a tournament was like $2500 before I really even started playing cash. And that was prob like 3 or 4 years ago. I have recently started trying to mix them into my routine because I think it would be fun to play some of the live events that I always wanna play but then bitch out because I don't wanna drop 5-10k on a buyin. But now that the NAPT has tons of satties, the WSOP is coming around and Foxwoods/Mohegan have tons of random series I think it could be a good time to play some MTT's. I do get fed up with them quite frequently, and in scenarios like now where I'm one tabling a small buying tourney, I get bored pretty quick. I also noticed that I play pretty poorly at PLO when I'm 2-3 tabling MTTs and 2-3 tabling PLO, which sucks because its tough for me to find 6 MTTs that I wanna play that aren't on Sundays that start at the same time. So I ideally would be able to mix and match, but its prob not going to happen. Altho today I did get to 1 table some mega fish at ½ plo and won 6 or 7 buyins which obv felt great. That was a much needed win because two days ago I had a -12 buyin session which was insane. I was just hanging out playing 4 tables while running deep in some $26 tourney and was just trying to occupy myself so I didn't end up doing something incredibly stupid and next thing I know im out 12 buyins. I just did one of those play terribly things and not have anything go my way and get coolered, and give up a lot and then lose and lose. I won 2 all ins the entire time. Fortunately on Sunday I had a pretty epic day. I was doing the exact same thing, had only the Sunday million running, and was filling in some tables. Next thing I know I was down $1300, plus I was down like $500 more from the Sunday majors that I got owned in. But then some mega clown sits at my tables, and I ran up a $1800 stack at ½ and then the table broke. But he moved to 2/4 and this table was the softest I think I have ever seen. Two maniac fish and one passive fish, me, one decent reg who I had position on, and one weak tite NL player to my left which seemed to be perfect. I managed to squeeze and make a pretty loose shove in a multiway pot, got my aces cracked, and next thing I know I was down another 700 (right after I had almost gotten even!) But then I won this pot, which was pretty epic, deffinately my largest in quite awhile.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5921539

Kinda thought I lost it at first, knew I had the flush blocked but for some reason only saw the straight.

Here is another super fun one against the fish I was chasing

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5921541

I have no idea what he was doing, just knew his range was any 4 and at that point makes it a call. Kinda surprised to see that hand.

Anyway, my super swingy variance filled month has caused me some stress. I felt super good about my game until this weekend and now I have a few doubts. I do know I have some leaks and some cases of over simplifying my hands, and I have cut down on tables to work on my game, reads, and everything in between. I feel pretty damn comfortable with my A game, but anything else seems super crappy, so I do need to work on that. I have been doing pretty well at playing only when I feel like playing, minus the random grinding with the MTTs running. I figured if my hourly is significantly higher this way, its just more fun and makes me feel like I'm doing better since I tend to have more consistent winning sessions. I also noticed that when I play for much more than an hour (most of the time) I tend to start losing. I looked back and I have a bunch of big sessions that look like mountains. A steady climb up and then a pretty steady climb down, so I think I might be able to just cut that out and stop at my peak when my brain is fresh and I'm playing well.

I have some goals set, and somethings I want to accomplish, they are both poker and non poker related, so I guess I can share a few.

-Beat up on MSPLO-I am almost there, altho now that poker is my main source of income its gonna be tougher to move up since I should be cashing out more and more. However, I started playing on FTP again (finally got rakeback, altho I dunno how good that is cuz they changed it around a bit) and this is pretty sweet because now my bankroll almost doubled since I had some money sitting there that I hadn't touched in awhile (backing/mtts/old grind money) so I guess I am really over rolled for my games now, it really is a skill/comfort thing that I am working on. Altho it might be a good idea to look into some coaching to speed up this learning curve.

-Learn Spanish-I was doing really well last summer, but for some reason stopped when I went back to school (took a French class because I couldn't take non elementary Spanish cuz of pre reqs), so I am going to have to restart this learning, but hopefully I can just hope right back into it.

-Qualify for some live poker-Right now my options are kinda limited, but NAPT and WSOP seem like good candidates.

Well I finally busted my MTT, got 50ish outta 1600? Got a whopping $150 for my 5 hours of playing that thing. Owel, lost a few flips 88

-Best of luck, see you at the tables