I hit Iron Man today in FTP, which secures me a $350 mid-year bonus, so I'm making this my last cash-game day of the month. I finished up with a pretty nice little session, of which I've posted the graph below. It started out a bit rocky, with my top 2 pair running into a flopped flush and my AA getting busted up by the table-tard's Q9, but I played very well overall and ended with a nice little win. I really feel like my game is coming along well after making some drastic changes a few weeks ago. I've still been spewy here and there, and I've still reverted back to my weak-tight tendencies at times, but I feel like I'm close to honing in on just the right balance for my general strategy.

I'm going to spend the last few days of the month trying to go robusto in Cake with some freerolls, lol. Should be good times. I'm also thinking of doing some sort of mid-year review post once the month is truly over. That's all for now. Here's today's graph:

I tried playing my new "enhanced TAG" style on 8 tables yesterday and it wasn't very good. I didn't have a bad day, but my red line looked like crap again. It takes too much concentration to really play well and play 8 tables. Today I played 3 1.5-hour sessions on 6 tables and it felt really good. I had plenty of focus and really seemed to be on my A-game. So from now on it's going to be 1.5 hour sessions on 6 tables (or less if I can't find 6 good ones).

Unfortunately, I ran like total garbage and dropped about 3 buy-ins. I kept having shorties flop sets vs my overpairs, got set-over-setted twice, got sets cracked by flushes, flopped top 2 vs a flush, and a rivered set that made someone's inside strt draw after I was betting the whole way. It was pretty much one cooler after another. Yuck. My only dropping 3 buy-ins was helped by me stacking 2 people in one hand at a deep table with a set of daisy-doussel-dandies. One guy had AA, and the other a flush draw. How the hell can anyone get almost 200bb's in on the flop with a flush draw? Amazing. Worked out for me though. The pot was like 550bb's.

Also, I purchased HoldemManager and started using it today. It is awesome! So much cool stuff you can do with it, and I love the HUD. Anyone have any cool stats that they really like to use in the HUD? That's all for now.

So I pretty much did a complete 360 in my playing style after the stunning realization I brought to light in my last post. I did a little experimenting at 10nl and it went pretty well, so I said f'it and gave it a go at my normal limit (100nl). I expected to do some pretty good spewage starting out, and I have spewed some stacks, but I have managed to more than make up for my spewy mistakes. I still have a good bit of tweaking to do, but I'm pretty confident that when I work out the kinks I'll be pwning at poker compared to my recent suckage.

My graph is starting to look slightly different than my previous trend. Who needs to win at showdown?:

So I've been winning at a steady clip, but I've been pretty unhappy with my winrate overall and have been trying to figure out why I can't seem to maintain a solid 4-5ptbb/100. Well, thanks to a blog post by verneer I'm pretty sure I've figured it out. I am hemorrhaging like like an African village hit by Ebola when it comes to non-showdown pots. I am almost in panic over this. I do, however, know that this can be fixed, and I have some ideas on how to start plugging this massive leak. I don't think I can do it all on my own, though. If any of you reading this would like to offer some suggestions or if you have the same problem and would like to discuss it, hit me up. Following is the schlobberknocking veiw of how bad I am sucking lately:

The red line obviously indicates total suckage. Help!!

Ok, so yesterday really wasn't that bad. 3 buy-in's is pretty tame, but it seems like a lot since I started playing full-ring. I love that there is so little variance in FR. I remember having 10 BI swings on a regular basis in 6-max, and that's not very awesome. I finally got a cashout from FTP via bank transfer, which took almost a month. I'm very glad it finally hit, I will be cashing out via check until they get the transfer system fixed.

Yesterday ended up very nicely. My girlfriend, Nicole, got a very good promotion this week, almost doubling her yearly salary. So last night I took her out for a baller dinner to celebrate. We had filet and lobster for 2 at Flemings Steakhouse, and it was awesome! I think it was only my second time ever having the ol' surf-and-turf, which makes it kind of special, and it surely did not disappoint. Oh, and it was a pretty good deal too. They have this "memorable meals" promotion going on until sometime in July, where you get the dinner I had for $99. It includes 2 six oz filets, 2 Australian lobster tails, chopped salads, sides, and dessert. It was great and Nicole was very happy/suprised. Part of our conversation during dinner was really funny:

Nicole: Wow, this lobster is really good! This is the first time I've had my own whole lobster tail for dinner. I've always just had bites of other people's, because it's always so expensive. What makes lobster so expensive?

Me: I'm not really sure. They are delicious, though.

Nicole: Is it because they are hard to catch or something? I wouldn't really think that they would be too hard to catch.

Me: Well, I'm sure they're harder to catch than a cow.

Then we just laughed for like 2 minutes.

OMFG, I got doom-switched so bad today! I could not win a hand!Hyachacahcahchachahcchachahchachahcha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not one to complain much, but I kind of felt like I got gang-raped by the poker gods today. This hand defines the day:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2716938

I do feel like I played well, at least. I'm also proud to say that I did not spew any stacks. I was able to keep the damage to -3 BI's, despite getting stacked like 6 times.

So May finished up my 2nd full month @ 100nl full-ring. I didn't post April results so I'll post that graph below. I feel like my results are kind of meh. Sure I've been doing faily well, but I feel like I could have done a lot better. I can remember a dozen or so spots from the last few months where I stacked off in marginal spots, some bordering on spew. If not for these mistakes I'd be showing at least a 5bb/100 win rate, and have an extra $1K or so to show for it. I guess I'm not really unsatisfied, but I know I can do better. I also need to get more hands in. Back in March I put in 46K hands without much trouble, so I feel like 45-50K is a good number of hands for me to shoot for in June. Sometimes I feel like my girlfriend is a huge Succubus, and really hinders my ability a lot of quality hands/month in. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage this and stay off life-tilt.

I also need to get some more coaching. I started getting coaching from DamnRinger in mid-April (can you tell where on the graph?), and he has really helped. The last few weeks of this month, though, I've been pretty tight on time and haven't had any more coaching sessions. I'm really going to need to get my game in shape if I plan to beat the next level. I am rolled for 200nl at the moment, and would like to take some shots pretty soon. I will start to take shots as my confidence increases and if good games are available.

That reminds me of what I think has been a big part of my moderate success the last few months. Game selection. Game selection has been huge for me. I have been a huge nit when it comes to sitting at and staying at tables, and I think it really makes a big difference. Finding those donks and sitting w/position on them just makes things so much easier and more profitable. It didn't seem to make much of a difference at 50nl and below, but as I move up, I think the work I put into game/seat selection will be key.

On the non-poker front, I went to Orlando for Memorial Day weekend. My girlfriend and I met up with my friend Nate, who I worked with in WA, and his wife. Nate just finished his first year of grad school at UGA, and just accepted a job at Eastern Washington where he will finish his degree. It was great to get together with them before they move back to WA. We did a lot of hanging out by the pool and drinking, going out to eat, and just chillin overall. We planned on all going to Aquatica, which is supposed to be a cool new water park. We purchased tickets at our hotel, drove over there at 10:30 am, and it was filled to capacity! So we ended up exchanging the tickets for Sea World tickets. I had not been to Sea World since I was like 12, and I have to say it was a total blast. The Kracken, their roller-coaster, is pretty awesome, as was the water ride there (Atlantis, I think). The shows were great too. I was kind of thinking that seeing Shamu was a little kid thing, but it's actually a pretty amazing show. Sea World is owned by Anheiser Busch, so they have free beer samples and a tour that allows you to learn about and try a bunch of different beers. Very good stuff overall.

The last 3 days I've been helping out my parent's friends who are 100% busto. They had to be out of their house by the end of the month, so I've been helping them move their stuff to a storage unit. It's a pretty sad story. I'll call them John and Jane. Jane has been a good friend of my mother's since they were like 20, and she married John who comes from a fairly wealthy family. John's main job for pretty much all of his life was to manage his father's money, via investing, savings, ect, and has always been successful investing for himself. Jane, despite having 2 master's degrees, has never really worked and just made and sold fine jewelry from her home on the side. So about 10 years ago things started to go downhill for them. John's parents were divorced and each still had plenty of money, as did John and Jane. John's mother started to develop Alzheimer's, at which point some scumbag swooped in, married her, and got her to change her will, leaving all of her money to him (I think around $6 mil+). He did this before she was deemed legally incomptetent, but by the time it was found out about it was too late for her to be able to change anything. This dude also managed to convince her that John was not even her son and was just trying to steal her money. A short time later, John's mother dies and this dude skates off with the money. He dies not long after, and his kids (who are not even related to John's family) end up getting all the money. Pretty fucked up. It gets better.

So John's father is still kickin and has plenty of dough, but he starts to die of mesothelioma. At about this time, the father's daughter-in-law is hitting some hard times and decides to come forward with a child abuse story. She's in her 20's at this point so it's past the statute of limitations for a criminal trial, but she is somehow able file a civil case to sue the father. For those of you who don't know, it's much easier to win a civil case as you only have to show a "preponderance of evidence" in you favor to win as opposed to "beyond a reasonable doubt" as in criminal cases. Well I think the father dies before it goes to court, and John inherits his money, but the daughter-in-law is still able to sue the estate ($2.3 mil at this point), meaning she can still go after this money that now belongs to John. My father is representing John and Jane now, and he knows that there is a fairly high likelyhood that if this goes to trial they will lose most of the money. The daughter-in-law's case sounded pretty bogus, but apparently jury's love to give tons of money to anyone they half-way believe in this type of case. So my father negotiates a settlement for $400K, which he highly suggested they go with. Well, the mother-in-law comes in and says that she knows her daughter is lying and will testify against her, blah blah blah, and convinces John and Jane to take this thing to trial. Of course it turns out the mother-in-law was on the take and backs out once the trial starts. At the end of the trial the daughter-in-law is awarded the entire $2.3 milloin estate.

After the trial, John and Jane still have money, but John is severely depressed from all of this and goes on chip-spewing suicide tilt in the stock market. He is a brilliant guy, and was always very successful with investments, but I guess he just flipped his lid and couldn't recover. Once they start to become broke, they sell their waterfront condo for $700K and move into a house that they are renting while they try to get things put back together. John never really recovered from the whole ordeal and continued to gradually lose the money from their condo, and Jane became kind of paralized from the whole ordeal herself. My mom's friend who's a psychologist said it's kind of analagous to a rabbit that is standing frozen in fear next to a coiled rattlesnake. They know they are doomed if they don't do something, but it's such a shock that they can't bring themselves to move. They have tons of nice stuff that they are selling off, but they are so far in debt that it doesn't really help. They are filing for bankrupcy, but I don't know enough about that to know whether or not it will help their situation. They've lived a millionaire lifestyle their whole lives and are suddenly broke, which has left them in a state where they are not strong enough to start over. I have no idea what they are going to do, but I hope they can find a way out. They are great people and I remember them being so nice and happy before all this hit. Jane survived breast cancer twice and now has to go through this. My father and I used to go fishing with John when I was in high school, and I remember him being very smart and interesting, whereas now he's kind of depressed and crazy. So anyway it's totally fucked up and I feel terrible for them, so I've been helping them move. I wish them the best.

Wow longest blog entry evar. Ok the graphs: The first one is from April 1 to May 7. The second one is the rest of May (started using PT3 when I got back from TX):

I was in Fort Worth, TX for the past week hanging out with my buddy Ryan. We went to grad school together at Georgia Southern and have been good friends since. No real reason for the trip, just hanging out while he's on break between semesters where he teaches. I didn't play much poker at his place because he had this bobo setup where he jacks his internet from a neighbor, and it's a pretty crappy signal and totally unreliable. We had planned on going to Six Flags in Arlington on a weekday and came to find out that it's not open Mon-Thurs right now, so we missed our chance during the weekend. We mostly just drank a lot of beer and chilled. We went to Flying Saucer a few times and tried some different beers. I love that place. My new favorite beer is "1554." The stuff is awesome. We also had some beer that Ryan home-brewed, and I have to say that it was pretty damn good. Oh, I almost forgot that he had a donkament at his place the 2nd night I was there. We cooked up some fajitas, drank been and margaritas, and played a litte pokers. The game was kind of like wiffle ball. Ryan and I were really the only one's who knew how to play. Ryan came in 3rd. I came in 2nd to probably the worst player there. He loved to do the "fuck it, I call" and flip over some garbage and suck out. I went into heads up with a huge chip lead and pretty much donked off my stack. I'll blame it on the fact that I was getting pretty drunk by then, lol. I also saw Redbelt while I was there, and thought it was pretty solid. Anyway, that's my short report. Good times.

I had a pretty solid day today. GOD MODE is fun, especially when you're playing well also:

So UB has a great table to blow off some steam: $.05/.10 HU LHM. I wasn't really there to blow off steam, but was bored and decided to sit. After a min I get a customer and we play 7 hands before he quits. Here are 2 of them (good times!):

Rndmknldgbl1: 7h Ts
JohnnyTorio: -- --

Pre-flop: Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.10. JohnnyTorio re-raises to
$.15. Rndmknldgbl1 calls.

Flop (board: Th Td Kh):

JohnnyTorio bets $.05. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.10.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.15. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.20. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.25.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.30. JohnnyTorio calls.

Turn (board: Th Td Kh 5s):

JohnnyTorio bets $.10. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.20.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.30. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.40. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.50.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.60. JohnnyTorio calls.

River (board: Th Td Kh 5s Qc):

JohnnyTorio bets $.10. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.20.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.30. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.40. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.50.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.60. JohnnyTorio calls.

Showdown:

Rndmknldgbl1 shows 7h Ts.
Rndmknldgbl1 has Ts Th Td Kh Qc: three tens.
JohnnyTorio mucks cards.
(JohnnyTorio has Ad Ac.)

Rndmknldgbl1: Kc 4h
JohnnyTorio: -- --

Pre-flop:

Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.10. JohnnyTorio re-raises to
$.15. Rndmknldgbl1 calls.

Flop (board: Ks 4c 2h):

JohnnyTorio bets $.05. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.10.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.15. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.20. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.25.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.30. JohnnyTorio calls.

Turn (board: Ks 4c 2h 2d):

JohnnyTorio bets $.10. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.20.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.30. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.40. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.50.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.60. JohnnyTorio calls.

River (board: Ks 4c 2h 2d 2s):

JohnnyTorio bets $.10. Rndmknldgbl1 raises to $.20.
JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.30. Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises
to $.40. JohnnyTorio re-raises to $.50.
Rndmknldgbl1 re-raises to $.60. JohnnyTorio calls.

Showdown:

Rndmknldgbl1 shows Kc 4h.
Rndmknldgbl1 has Kc Ks 2h 2d 2s: full house, deuces full of kings.
JohnnyTorio mucks cards.
(JohnnyTorio has 8s 7s.)

Hand #52603498-14538 Summary:

$.33 is raked from a pot of $3.30.
Rndmknldgbl1 wins $2.97 with full house, deuces full of kings.

.....of Sport Shooting USA. This is my favorite video-arcade game. I started playing it at the Super Wal-Mart in Statesboro, GA when I was in grad school. I would randomly go there and play if I was bored or needed to blow off some steam. Anyway, there happens to be one at a gas station between my place and my parent's, so I stop and play almost every time I go see them. Well, as of yesterday I have the top score in every catagory of this particular game (I think it's 13 total). I used to just be good at the "speed" catagory, but I started working on the others and now I have crushed them all. I guess I'm not really the absolute master of the game, just my local one. So I guess i am the master of Sport Shooting USA, FL highway 52. lol. Hell, I guess now I'll have to start traveling to other locations with the same game to see if I can crush the locals. I wonder if there is a place for hometown heroes to go and try to beat the best at this game, like Vegas for poker players? Haha, anyway I'm fine basking in the glory of my local game for now. (This is probably the nerdiest paragraph I have written in my entire life.) :-)

Oh, poker is going well lately too. Boom switch is back, just hope it stays with me.