Short and sweet.

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3199184/blog-oct15-2011-pdf-october-15-2011-4-47-am-47k?da=y

I hate trying to format my crap in this blog editor, so I'm just gonna link to a PDF for you guys. Enjoy!

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3198619/blog-oct14-2011-pdf-october-14-2011-3-41-pm-65k?da=y

Today was productive. Had a couple lessons and searched for apartments near the Strip, found a few that seem like great deals. Viewing them tomorrow. Andrea and I will be moving on February 1, because I need to be back near the Strip during the summer for WSOP, since I'll have to be back and forth to Rio a lot. We'll most likely end up in Panorama Towers again, which is where we were earlier this year. I loved it there.

Started actually eating right again this week as well. Earlier in the year I lost about 20 lbs dieting and exercising consistently, but since then I've gained some of it back. Now that I'm going to be at home and grinding for a few months before next WSOP, I'm gonna get back on track with that as well. Can I get down to 160 from 180 by next WSOP? I hope so!

In tribute to Rush Week, if you read this blog and you are a RUSH player, I will give you a 1-hour lesson for a discount of 43% from my normal rate! Where I normally charge $350 per hour, I will give 1 hour per request at a rate of just $200 per hour, if you make your request during Rush Week, which ends on Dec. 5.

Anyway, today was another good one at the tables. Somewhat happy with how I played although I definitely dumped off 2 buy-ins pretty stupidly, and ran well to boot. Not-so-disguised brag:

It's been a long hiatus for me, both in making videos and posting anything substantial to this blog. I've been immersed in coaching and traveling, as well as working on some other projects, some of which are not related to poker. So, I'll try to get in a lot of info in a relatively short post.

Recent Life

WSOP was terrible. I played great excepting a couple critical mistakes, but never really had any run of cards at all. Personally, I've never done fantastically well in any tournament without having at least a half dozen big pots that were just fortunate. But this summer just wasn't for me - never won any cluster of big hands in a single event. The main event was the worst. I was outright chip leader after day 1, having an incredibly epic run of amazing cards and brilliant play all throughout the day, and on day 2 everyone at my table played great, including BHanks who outshined all my previous impressions of him. Then on day 3, pretty much the same - everyone played fantastic at my table. It was so gross. I didn't run bad at all, I just wound up with patient, solid, aggressive players all around. Day 4 was a nightmare - 4 very deep-stacked, loose-aggressive, highly talented players were all to my left, and everyone else was nitty. So I bubbled, busting out with AA < QT and less than 10 spots from the money.

One of my students had an even worse day that day, taking a bad beat in life that made my main event bubble seem like an absolute trifle. So we decided to go out drinking and drown our sorrows. We went to the Griffin in Downtown Las Vegas, which is a really cool bar where a lot of locals hang out. A girl approached us after a while and invited us to come talk to her and her friends, which we did after a few more minutes of wrapping up the conversation we were having. And that was the night I met my new girlfriend, Shadow! So we've been dating for about 4 months now, and I'm really happy to have her in my life. She's been incredibly good to me and really brings a lot of value to the table. Let me put it this way. If I could do it all over again and change something random, I wouldn't go back and run amazingly hot on day 4 of the main event if it meant that I never met Shadow.

In July I hired one of my best friends, Andrea, to be my live-in personal assistant. She handles all of my scheduling with my students, takes care of errands like dry cleaning and such, and acts as liaison to by business partners, attorney, and accountant. I have almost 30 full-time students and another half dozen or so getting a few lessons a month now, so she is a major boost to my productivity. I am so lazy when I have to do tedious things like scheduling and playing e-mail tag, but when all I have to do is work when I'm told, I can get a lot of stuff done.

August was a party month for me. I really didn't make Andrea's life easy, needing to be driven around everywhere because I was drunk all the time. And it was just generally a bad time to take time off from poker anyway. It was irresponsible and life-tilty of me, but it's past now.

From September 1 to October 13, I went on an extended vacation with two of my friends, Amit and Adam, who are also my students. We got a lot of work done on our games while we were gone, and won at insanely high winrates in RUSH full-ring games, but also did a lot of cool stuff.

Vacation Report

We started off in Portland, OR for 5 days to see Amit's parents and browse the strip club capital of the US. That's right, Portland has the highest number of strip clubs per capita of any US city. We went whitewater rafting and hiking as well, which was a ton of fun.

From there, we went to Xpu-ha, Mexico, and did a bit of snorkeling and general relaxing in the sun. After spending a night in Chetumal, Mexico, where we had some amazing chicken at a random restaurant, we moved on to San Pedro, Belize. While getting scuba diving certification and meeting some cool travelers, we stumbled upon some live $2/5 and $5/10 games that turned out to be really soft, and we played them for several days, cleaning up pretty well. The rake was also low, being a fixed amount of about $25 per person for the entire night, which lasted several hours. And the scuba diving was absolutely incredible there. If you haven't been to Belize, visit San Pedro, do some diving, and play some poker at Pedro's Inn. And let me know when you go - maybe I and some friends will meet you there!

After San Pedro we journeyed to Flores, Guatemala to visit the Mayan ruins at Tikal. That was great, plus we had a terrifying experience in a strip club there. While we were sitting there in a fairly empty club with very few patrons and even fewer girls, suddenly the front door SLAMMED open and several military officers with their Uzis drawn rushed in, with some paparazzi in their midst snapping flash photos inside the club. As the other patrons, who were obviously locals, got frisked, we were ignored. Apparently, tourists are invisible in Guatemala! Some men in suits sat down with the people who appeared to be the managers of the establishment and grilled them for a while. After they left, we all breathed a sigh of relief and decided to go home because apparently the music would not be allowed to continue.

Seeing no reason to stay in Guatemala any longer, we went back to Belize, but this time to San Ignacio, which is near the Guatemalan border. There, we went to the cave at Aktun Tunichil Muknal (ATM), where Mayan priests would go to make sacrifices and conduct rituals. It was believed by the Mayans, according to our guide, that the earth was resting on the back of a turtle and that this cave was the entrance to the turtle's mouth. Inside it, stalactite formations looked like the roots of the trees that the Mayans regarded as the trees of life. Inside, we saw calcified human remains, including complete skeletons, and lots of artifacts such as pottery, turtle shells, tools, and weapons. This was an incredible experience and our guide was amazing. Besides that, we were the only three people in the group that day.

Back to San Pedro for more poker and shenanigans for a few days. Then, back to Mexico, this time to Cozumel, for more scuba diving and lots of drinking at our all-inclusive resort. The diving that we did in Cozumel wasn't as good as in Belize, not by a long shot. However, Cozumel is reputed to have the best diving in the world, so perhaps we didn't get to the right spots.

From there, we went to Minneapolis to stay with a friend of mine from college, and explored the town. We loved the food and culture, and I particularly enjoyed the tattooed and pierced women who seemed to sprout from the very earth like thorny vines yet bearing sweet, ripe, delectable fruits. Louis CK performed one night while we were in town, and we got front-row seats. He's my absolute favorite stand-up comic, and I laughed so hard that I'm pretty sure several people around me didn't even have a good time at all. I didn't care, not even a little, because if they can't deal with loud laughter at a stand-up comedy performance, they deserve to have a bad time. More sadistic fun for me anyway. :D

After leaving Minneapolis, we traveled to New York for a few days, mostly for food, comedy, and some touristy stuff. We saw the Empire State Building but none of us was particularly interested in the Statue of Liberty, so instead we went to the Comedy Cellar twice. Both nights were amazingly funny and had great lineups. Reviews of Masa (an extremely expensive sushi restaurant) pretty much agreed, unanimously, that the meal was amazing but it wasn't worth the $600+ price tag. Per Se, a Thomas Keller restaurant, is right near Masa and comparably expensive, but generally considered to be worth the price. However, we didn't have sufficiently formal clothing for it, since we had been traveling mostly in the tropics and had no need for it. So, we decided to go to L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon and have a tasting menu at the counter. It was one of the best meals of my entire life, and was only about $380 after wine AND a generous tip. That was absolutely the best idea we had on the whole trip, except possibly getting scuba certified.

Toronto was only a 12-hour bus ride away, and the buses had Wi-Fi, so we just played poker the whole way there. We visited Adam's aunt Wendy, who is an absolute sweetheart and showed us an amazing time, for a couple days. Afterward, we stayed with another one of my students, Morgan, and his wife Chris. They were incredibly gracious hosts and hopefully will accept me as a guest again sometime soon, because I want to go back to Toronto. While there, we went to Niagara Falls and attended a Toronto Marlies game, both of which were awesome. Hockey is such an amazing sport to watch live.

I didn't mention yet that Andrea and I moved into a 5-bedroom house in Las Vegas with Amit and Adam on August 1. I've been in Vegas full-time since October of 2009, having been in San Diego prior to that. When we finally got home, I had a week to prepare for an introductory seminar for four new students. The seminar went well and my new guys have been moving up rapidly, working hard and seeing great results. They mostly play RUSH, some 6-max and some full-ring, and they are learning fast.

Since then, I haven't really done anything but coach and travel. Andrea and I went to Denver to visit some friends who just had a baby, and then we went to her parents' house for Thanksgiving and then to my own parents' house, along with Shadow, Amit, and Adam, for another Thanksgiving which took place late, on November 28. All of that was a ton of fun, but now it's time to get back to the grind. I've put some videos on the roster for the next few weeks, and have done some collaborations with students, which will hopefully lead them to start making videos full-time for CR.

Poker

Here's how I've done online in the little amount that I've played recently (and after the last time my laptop's hard drives crashed, causing me to lose ~60k hands), including my vacation and the end of summer. A bunch of the "$2/4 NL" hands are actually $2/4 RUSH hands, imported before HEM was making the distinction:



Yesterday and today I put in some hands for Rush Week. I played $2/4 yesterday and was very noticeably rusty, making a lot of simple and stupid mistakes. It didn't go so well, but wasn't bad either:



And today I played $1/2 to sharpen up, and it was great. Besides flopping a boat and getting backdoor-overboated, everything went pretty well:



December should be a very productive month for me, and I'll be trying to update this blog frequently. Good luck everyone!

On another forum, some people called into question my abilities as a coach and the price that I charge. I addressed all their concerns there, and in fact added the following promise:

If anybody has paid me by-the-hour for coaching and feels that they were misled about me as a coach, or feels dissatisfied with the service they got, then please PM me and let me know why, when your session(s) was(were), and how much you paid, and I will happily issue you a full refund.

Thanks!

January 18-22, 2010 in Las Vegas, I'll be taking on a new group of students for my long-term coaching program. The training begins with a five-day in-person classroom-style seminar. Minimum requirements for students are an $8k bankroll and stakes of $1/2 or higher (no-limit hold 'em players only). I'm always looking for more promising students whom I can help rise through the stakes!

If you would like more information and/or to interview for the program, please contact me at corwin.cole@cardrunners.com.

Thanks!
[vital]Myth

So I've been inactive on CR for a while now. Primarily, my 2-month hiatus was due to the fact that the recent economic downturn has hurt my parents really badly, and I've had to spend a lot of time and money helping them remain afloat. As such, I was almost completely busto in March. But they got to keep their house and managed to finally find some work, and I no longer have to support them (at least for now), which is a huge relief.

I filed for extension on my taxes because I'd much rather pay penalties in 6 months than to have my bankroll slashed dramatically right now. Additionally, I sold Peachy my live cash game action. So I'm now backed for live tourneys, online tourneys, and live cash, but I have my own online cash action. Sweet, since I don't play online cash anymore. /sarcasm

Nothing really happened in March. I made a final table in a small event at the Wynn Classic and busted 6th for who cares how much. I bubbled the main event, again, for the 2nd year in a row now. Last year I busted 28th when 27 paid, and this year I busted 14th when 12 paid. I lost a bit of money in live cash games (playing on my own action at the time). I did have fun on my birthday though, as well as my girlfriend's birthday (more on her later).

In April I sold peachy my live cash action, using the same make-up as everything else (about $55k to start), and got back on the tourney grind. I bricked the $5k WSOP-Circuit event at Harrah's Rincon in San Diego, then bricked the $10k WPT event at Foxwoods, but made like $5k playing $5/10 NL cash there also. I made about $3k playing $5/10 at a local card room in San Diego during that time. Then I came back to Vegas and hit the tables hard. I'm up almost $13k so far in $5/10 games. In the $10k SCOOP Main Event, I busted 12th for $65,020, paid out my 5% swap with Daut, and got out of make-up officially. Tonight, I won the first single-table satellite that I played to the $25k WPT Main Event at Bellagio, picking up two last-longer pools in the process. I paid $3k for the satellite, $1300 for the two last longers, and $5100 to lilholdem for a 20% save that we agreed upon. So I am playing the $25k for $3700 make-up. Sweet life! That puts me up more than $40k for April, which is a huge relief. Hopefully I can cash in the $25k and make a nice score for the tiny amount I paid.

So I'll briefly say that my girlfriend is awesome. If you have me on Facebook, you can see her in pics with me. She's really, really, VERY good for me, and I am extremely optimistic about her.

I'm rolling out some new videos this month, beginning with some SSNL Leakfinders, and I'll have a couple MSNL Leakfinders coming out as well, followed by a few new series to round out 2009. Additionally, I had an article published in CardPlayer this month, and I have an interview set to be published next month. I've been recommended to write for them full-time, so hopefully I get that gig - it will be great for my exposure. In May, I'm looking to take on several new students, which is always nice.

If you're reading this and interested in a long-term coaching deal, please inquire! Note that my minimum starting requirements are an $8k bankroll and willingness to play at least $1/2.

Myth

So I was feeling good about winning yesterday. But then I lost $3,350 in 1500 hands just now. Just sick outrageous coolers. Lost two 200bb+ stacks, KK into AA and straight into overstraight, ran really bad against shortstacks, and got AQ in against AK on an ace high flop in a 3bet pot three times.

WTF I cannot win at $2/4, something is terribly wrong. Down almost 20 buyins now... -.-a

Yesterday was still kinda bad, but not as bad as the 1st and 2nd of the month. I was down a little less than 2 buyins, I think. Today was a lot better. I plugged a lot of little leaks and changed my approach a bit. Worked wonderfully. I got the right people to tilt and donate, kept picking on other people who wouldn't adjust, and played solidly against the tighties. Overall, today was a major confidence booster and it felt great. I played about 2,000 hands, up 3.7 buyins. I am now down about $3,500 for the month. It's still a sad sight in my PT, but I realized today that it shouldn't really be too hard to recover quickly.

I completed Part V of Back to Math Class today also. Overall, today was quite productive and positive. I'll probably play another session later tonight.