I will still be posting here some but the majority of my blog posts will now be over with the rest of my stugy group at:

www.showmepotatosalad.com

We have a solid group of player ranging from 50nl to 200nl (possibly 400nl soon?) Come check us out.

A lot happened for me over the last week. Last Tuesday was my last day of working part-time at my old office. I am now practicing full-time in Des Moines which is great as I should be able to get in a lot me poker now that I will be home on Monday and Tuesday evening. Obviously it also means I'll be putting 1000 less miles on the car a month and saving money on gas (which by the way, dropped to $2.99/gal here today, woohoo).

Thursday evening and Friday I interviewed for a position into an Orthodontic residency. They received 150+ applications and are interviewing 30 ppl for 5 spots. So, needless to say, it is extremely competitive! The interviews went as well as could be hoped and I will find out in early December if I am accepted. If I get in, it is a 2 year program which goes year-round.

Friday night I had a rehearsal and dinner for a good friends wedding which was on Saturday. We had a lot of fun as tons of friends were back in town. This morning was a brunch and then I had to drive back home.

September ended up fairly well for me poker-wise. I won about 3 BIs but actually was up 6 BIs in 6max as I didn't do too hot in my HU endeavors. I plan on getting in some more HU this month as well as plenty of 6 max. Hopefully my volume will really improve now that I will be around on Mondays and Tuesdays.

I plan on really focusing on poker this month and will definitely be taking some shots at 100nl. I got in a few hands there this month although too few hands to really make any assumptions.

So, it's been a while since I've updated here. Things have been good although very busy. Recently my wife and I moved from Iowa City to Des Moines and in the 3 months since then I have been working in Iowa City Monday's and Tuesday's and in Des Moines the rest of the week. Originally when we moved I was only offered part time work in Des Moines so it was nice to be able to still work part time at my old job. That being said, it is a 2 hour drive each way and it is starting to get really old. I'm putting 1000 miles on my car every month just on Monday and Tuesday not to mention the cost of gas. Anyway, one of the other dentist's in my practice in Des Moines recently left and I was offered a full time position. I'd be an idiot to not take it as it solves so many problems.

I will be able to see my wife more and since she is on call a lot, any time I get with her is a bonus. Also, when she is on call while I'm in Iowa City we sometimes have to kennel our dog which I don't like to do and is also expensive. I quit my Iowa City job last week and will be finished on Sept. 30th and start full time in Des Moines in October.

Not only is this great for all the above reasons but also for poker. I have found the thing that bothers me the most month to month is the volume of hands I am able to get it. I recently have been experimenting with 6 tables and it is going so-so . Commuting back and forth my Monday and Tuesday's are pretty much a waste so now I'll be able to get in quite a few more hands. Also, if I'm gone two days a week then when I am home I want to spend time with my wife and dog instead of poker. Now that I will be able to see them every day it will open up other times to play as well.

For those of you that have read some of my previous blogs you will know I have been contemplating going back to school to specialize in Orthodontics. Well, I applied and have been offered an interview. They take 5 residents a year and I would be ecstatic to get a spot. My interview is Oct. 3rd and I find out if I match on Dec. 3rd. I'll actually be in Vegas that day with my poker study group so it should be a fun night if I indeed get a spot.

On the poker front things have been going well. Recently in the last couple days things have sucked as I've run horribly but I can't somplain too much as I'm still at 6 ptbb/100 for the month. Assuming I don't have a downswing here in the second half of the month I will be turning in my 3rd straight winning month for what I think would be the first time EVER!!! I'm up almost 15 BIs in that time span and feel great about my game. I even played a little 100nl today. I only played one table and mixed it in with some 50nl. I won a half BI there and felt pretty comfortable with the pot sizes. I am almost complete transferring some money around and if not the end of this month, definitely in October I will give 100nl a shot. What do you guys think is a good shot. What I mean is how many BIs should I allow myself to lose prior to moving back down. Obviously it's different for everyone but what do you guys like to do?

This weekend I am headed out to Providence to see a friend and we will be taking a day trip to Boston as well. I should be able to meet up with Les which I'm pretty stoked about as well. Anyway, this is plenty long so I'll call it quits.

Later

Played a short session this morning. Really swingy!!! Lost a big pot early which I'll post below and then continued to rail on pple in non-showdown pots. It's a good thing my w$ w/o SD was good as my W$SD was negative. Anyway, here is my graph and a few hands.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3088850 - This was villian's very first orbit at the table so I had zero stats/reads on him. Should I have just folded to the 4bet or is getting it in standard here. I figured a FD my play the hand this way or a bigger Q if the player is really bad.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3088861 - Villian here was playing 43/9/3.5. He was the reason I was at the table. He had been going crazy, often c/r'ing and 3betting me. His AF by street was 2/4/inf. Based on how he was playing I figured he would have reraised the flop or at least bet the turn. I checked the turn trying to get him to do something stupid. On the river I was betting for value and also an amount I thought he may be able to shove on. I figured the A was an excellent card for me as if he had a FD on the turn with the Ad, he now has a pair. Was this hand played correctly?

Tournaments are frustrating. 18 paid and 23 remaining. Lose a race for half your stack when you're 3rd in chips. Lose another race for the rest of it. Bubble tournament. sigh!

So the last few weekends have been really crazy. We went to a wedding two weeks ago and the last two weekends I've driven up to Minneapolis, once to go boating and once for a bachelor party. So, unfortuanately, unless I go crazy the second half of this month, I'm not going to be able to get in my goal of 12k hands. That being said, I have continued to play well recently. I have really been focusing on my 3bet% and balancing my flop/turn cbet %'s. Things are going well and I am currently running at 7ptBB/100 for the month.

My study group started a HU tournament last weekend. I played Alvin in the first round and Ozzy in the second. After trying to get in the final match a couple different times, we finally got it played tonight. I ended up taking down Travis for the title so ship the $175. wooot!.

I am excited to say that I think my early goal of reaching 100nl by September may actually be a reality. I need to get some money moved around but I am thinking of testing the 100nl waters sometime near the beginning or middle of September. If I am able to do so, this will be my third attempt at 100nl and hopefully this time it'll stick. Anyway, I'm extremely tired after the bach party this weekend and driving back home. I need to get a good night sleep. Take care everyone.

Here are my stats from July. Pretty happy with my results, hopefully more of the same in August with maybe twice as many hands. I feel pretty good about 7k hands considering I spent a lot of time studying this month as well. I'm shooting for about 12k hands next month. Hopefully I don't get an immediate 7BI downswing like I did at the beginning of July. Could have been a truly great month instead of a good one without those for 2k hands. Anyway, here are the stats.

This month has been going well. I feel like things are really starting to click and I am consistently putting in more winning sessions. My W$w/oSD has improved dramatically. I'm mostly breaking even in this category which is much better than the negative slope I use to have. I will wait to post my result for the month for a few more days but so far I am very happy. In the first 5 days of July I dropped 7 BIs at 50nl. This sucks for the obvious reasons but also, I had just jumped back to 50nl so it was a little bit of an extra strain to my roll. Anyway, I have stuck with it and as of right now I am about 3BIs up. I haven't gotten in as many hands as I'd like to have but I have been extremely busy with other things. My results so far though make me really want to get in a lot of hands these last couple days and into next month. If my results continue like they have over the last 7k hands or so, I may actually be able to get to 100nl by the fall.

I played some live poker yesterday as I had a buddy in town. He is a limit player and so I played 3/6 limit instead of 1/2nl. It was a fairly rough night of cards ( i never had better than 2 pair). Anyway, the play was obviously horrendous as expected. Normally when playing live I find as least one or two others at the table who seem decent, last night everyone sucked. I was a little frustrated as it was probably the juiciest game I'd ever played in yet ended up down $45. I realized early I was giving ppl way too much credit and often folded the best hand. Pple were betting 2nd and 3rd pair like the nuts and I finally just started calling people down with top pair. I did make what I think was a pretty bad mistake. I 3bet JJ preflop and get 2 callers. The flop came Q83r and it checked around. I didn't cbet as I figured they are never folding a Q and if I check, they will fire the other streets with less than top pair and thus I am widening their range (mistake?). Anyway, the turn was another 8 and the guy in 1st position led out. I called and the guy behind me (the biggest fish at the table) called, The river was a 7 and the first guy lead again. While I was thinking the fish called out of turn and turned over 99. He apologized when he realized me messed up and it was my decision. I know I'm ahead of the fish but would this guy lead both the turn and the river with less than a Q or 8? I should have thought longer about it as it was $6 for me to win $48 thus 8:1. In retrospect I think this is an automatic call knowing I am closing the action with the guy behind me acting out of turn. Anyway, here's where I tilted, I folded and the original raiser folded saying he was completely bluffing. The fish with the 77 won the hand by default, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Definitely my mistake but I don't know if I am just being results oriented, should I have called this automatically????????

Some other hands throughout the night I though were funny was when A high won a 7way, 5bet preflop pot worth $130. seriously, A high. Also, I saw 74o take down a $120 pot and then get criticized by a guy with 77 saying "how could you call 5 bets preflop with 74?" I quietly in my head said, wtf were you doing in a 5bet pot with 77. I mean seriously, in a 6 way 5 bet pot, if you are holding 77, you rarely have more than two outs right?

Also, yesterday I took the GRE. I did really well on the math like I expected but did just average on the english/reading. blah blah, at least it's over so now I can play more poker instead of studing. I wasn't able to get much sleep the night before but that's my own fault. I decided at 8pm to play a $2 mtt for fun on FT. I didn't expect it to take to long and ended up getting heads up with over a 2:1 chip lead. Josh railed me for a while. I have final tabled a decent number of mtts and have finished 2nd twice and 3rd three times but have yet to win an mtt (90 man sngs don't count). Anyway, I rivered two pair against his rivered gut shot str8 to give him a 2:1 lead on me. He went on to crush me pretty good from that point on and once again, I finished 2nd. Ended up going to bed at 2am only to take the GRE at 8am. Oops!

Anyway, I'll probably post a graph with my poker stats in a few days, hopefully these next couple days go as well as the last couple weeks. later.

Slow day at work today so I've spent some time in the office studying. It's been a while since I've had to study at all and I'm not used to the hours needed to get through material. Summary --> studying sucks!!

So I jumped back on the horse and put in a winning session the other night. I didn't get a chance to play yesteday at all but I hope today and tomorrow to get in a lot of hands. I think for a short while I am going to cut back and only play 3 tables instead of 4. I've played 50nl before but it has been a while and I think the size of the bets and what not is getting to me. By cutting back I feel I will be able to focus better and while I may be handicapping myself as far as winnings, I think I will improve faster and show more consistent results.

On a side note. As some of you know already, I am currently practicing general dentistry. Ever since I got out of school I have tossed the idea around of going back and doing a residency in Orthodontics. It is a very competitive program and tough to get into to. While I had good marks through school and performed well in clinics, I'll be honest, I wasn't top 10 in my class so I didn't think right out of school I would have a great shot at getting accepted into a program. At the same time, as a specialist you don't get to do a lot of the things you've learned in school and a lot of those things I enjoy doing. So, I figured I'd try out general dentistry first and see how I like it and if I didn't, I could always go back. Well, even though I enjoy what I do, I find some of the more complex orthodontic cases very interesting and I have decided to give it a shot.

I will be applying for residency that would start in July of 2009. My wife has 4 years of residency at Iowa to do and since I don't want to be apart from her, I will only be applying for Iowa's program. It is a top 3 program and will be difficult to get into, but I did graduate from there which helps and while I am not top 10 from my class, I will have 3 years of private practice experience by the time I would be accepted which definitely helps. I will attempt to get in twice and if after 2 years if I haven't gotten in, I can either settle for general dentistry or expand my application to other schools (my wife would be finished by then).

The funny thing is, in doing an ortho residency, you actually receive a Masters of Science degree from the college of education. But, the college of education requires the GRE for all graduate school students. So, even though I already have a doctorate, I need to take a test to prove I am able to handle post graduate studies. I have scheduled my exam for the last Saturday in July so I can get my application in by September 1st. Anyway, because of that, I need to be studying a lot this month as it has been quite a while since I've used a lot of the things on that test. So, unfortunately, I won't be able to get in as many hands this month as I had hoped since I'll be splitting my free time up. Anyway, I still hope to get in a lot so that I can start progressing through the limits. Not much else, just sitting around at home right now waiting for DirecTv installation to get here, no TV sucks!!!