Blech Monday

Another 0 fer day. Played well, ran bad. Nuttin' new.

Sunday Sunday Sunday

Went average. I moneyed 2 of the Sunday majors (the brawl on FullTilt and the Million on Stars) but never got anywhere in either so I lost a little for the day. I am playing well so I'll just keep grinding away.

We are having a little family reunion in San Fran next weekend and then my wife (which means me too) is on vacation for a week the following week so I am planning on playing full days this M-F as well as the following M-F so that I can get my 200 tourneys in for the month.

Day Off

I took today off to watch some football. My wife was actually off this evening so I made us some burgers and we went to go see Milk, which was basically just a biography of Harvey Milk but was a story I really knew very little about so it was good to see. When we came back, Chula (our dog) seemed a little too happy to see us until we saw the empty Cheetos bag on the living room floor. Should be a fun pooper scooper pick up tomorrow.

I will be back at it playing again tomorrow.

Meh

2nd night in a row my AA got cracked by a smaller pair all-in late in a tourney. I continue to play well, so once those big hands start holding up I should start seeing some nice results again. Waiting for the results to happen is always a challenge though.

First positive day of the new year

So yesterday I ended the cashless streak, today I ended the losing money streak. I got 9th in the $50 rebuy on Stars. I played about as perfect as I could and just got extremely unlucky late where I took 2 bad beats and lost 2 races. I am definitely frustrated since 9th was like $1k and 1st was over $11k but at least I made a final table, and at least I am playing well. I am taking the rest of the night off since I am a little tilted (stupid bad beats) and will watch the football game and then I'm at it again tomorrow.

At least I finally got a cash

I ended the cashless streak, but had another losing day. I made maybe one or two overaggressive moves, but feel like my game is coming back into form. One good cash, and I am back in black.

0 for 2009

well I had another 0fer day. So far I have played 27 tourneys this year and haven't cashed yet. Today was more of just running bad than playing bad - I don't think I got it in bad in any spot today so at least I am cutting down on the mistakes. Tomorrow I will hopefully break out and at least cash in something.

Not playing my best

I got my first full day back in today and it went poorly. I didn't play horribly but I did make some mistakes and to keep my ROI at what I need it to be, I just can't make silly mistakes. I am always surprised at how hard it is to stay focused and patient especially after a long stretch of not playing. I find myself getting upset and taking it personally when players raise me. When I am playing well, I am playing just as if I am giving advice on a poker forum. I analyze the best play to make based on my cards, position, and opponent and just focus on making the best plays and letting everything else take care of itself. But no matter how many hands I play and how ingrained it is in my head, I still expect to win every hand that I play, and I still get upset when I don't win. So the plan for tomorrow, is simply to keep taking care of my life first and then getting my poker in with a good mindframe. Once I get back into playing consistent mistake free poker the results should start flowing again.

Back to Playing (Finally)

So it's been like a month since I played last. I dropped the S.B. clan off at the airport this morning, my wife is on call today, so I am back at it. I played well today in my morning/aft session but got no love. I will put in a night session as well, so we'll see. But I should be back to putting in at least some volume this week.

Back in Sac-town

The photo is me and Jack - my nephew from Dallas.

I'm back and continuing the laziness. I actually played 3 tourneys today, but for whatever reason I can't get the new update on Tilt to download on my desktop so I can't use my pokertracker and don't really like playing on this laptop. I think I will be getting a new computer next year because it is now like 7 years old and is just getting slower and slower.

Our Wisco friends' flights got canceled so my wife and I will just enjoy vegging out a bit this weekend. She needs and deserves it - she works way too much. I am hoping to get in a couple of movies since so many good ones are out now.

Christmas is pretty anticlimactic this year since my wife is working 30+ hours, but we will be celebrating with her family when they come up next week for new years.

In Dallas

So I am enjoying my time just chilling with my family here in Dallas. I have gotten a couple of messages from people wondering about the possibility of becoming my "protege" next year. I'll be honest and say that I really haven't given in that much thought, so I am not sure exactly what it will entail or how I will go about picking possible students. No matter what, it won't happen until February. Once I do figure it out, I'll make sure to let interested people know.

Depending on how well I travel, I should be home tomorrow - and then we have some friends coming (this time if they travel well) from Wisconsin on Friday. Then my wife's family comes up to visit us for New Years so I probably won't be playing or posting much until next year.

Getting bored?

So I have been doing nothing the last couple of days and thought I was getting bored enough to play today. Turns out I am bored but still not really into playing. I entered 2 tourneys at 5:00 with the plan of playing the quarter million on stars and the sniper on UB at 6:00 but after I made an iffy call in one and got coolered in the other I just decided to hang it up.

Tomorrow I have some errands to run before we head off to Dallas so I won't be playing then either.

Motivation seems to be my achilles heel - hopefully I can figure something out because the only way for me to make more money is by playing more volume.

Year in Review Time/Goals for Next Year

At this time of the year there are always programs recapping the last year on tv, so I figured it is time for me to do so as well.

My goals for this year were:
1) pass the bar exam
2) attain at least a 50% ROI playing poker
3) make $100 k playing poker, and
4) get back in shape.

I accomplished 1 and 2 and although I didn't make 100k I made enough so that with our combined income we lived perfectly comfortably. I am still woefully out of shape so of the four goals that is the one I failed most miserably.

I also became an instructor for pokerpwnage.com which was unexpected but has gone really well so far. So all in all, I feel like I had a really good year.

My goals for next year are going to be pretty similar to last years':

1) I want to maintain an ROI of at least 50%
2) I want to profit 100 k playing poker
3) I want to play at least 2500 tourneys (doubling my volume this year - and basically guaranteeing a 100k year if I can get close to a 50% ROI)
4) I want to continue garnering more exposure in the pokerworld which will hopefully lead to more moneymaking opportunities (sponsorships, writing deals, etc.), and
5) I want to get back in shape.

I am also seriously considering taking on a student or two as a sort of "protege" and will coach them in return for a percentage of their winnings. The only thing keeping me back from announcing this at this point is that I want to really concentrate on getting my volume in first - once I feel that I have that under control and have time for coaching I will do so.

The rest of this year will consist of playing when I can but there is going to be a lot of non-playing time too with all of the visits and visitors we have planned.

Getting Christmasy

So I haven't played since my final table on Tuesday (which really shouldn't be a surprise with me). When I actually put in volume I let the house go to crap a bit, so I've been catching up on raking the yard, cleaning the garage, just generally getting the house in order.

I also bought a christmas tree, only to realize when I got it home that it was too big for our tree stand. So a couple hours of using the crappy saw that I have and shaving parts of the trunk off and I try again... only to realize the tree is just too damn big for the plastic stand that we had. The f-bombs were definitely flying but today I walked the dog to the neighborhood hardware store and got a new stand. And finally we got the sucker up. Yay for small successes.

Pokerwise I am thinking seriously of what I want my goals for next year to be. I am debating about whether I want to take a student or two on or if I just want to focus on playing as much as I can. I do know that I want to try and double my volume - if I can keep around the same ROI as this year and double my volume I should have a super successful year.

Tomorrow my father-in-law comes in and my wife is off for the weekend, so I'll probably be back and playing next Monday.

Little hot streak going

I got 5th in the Nightly 100k on pokerstars. I feel I played really well overall so even though I am disappointed not to take down the 1st place (which was over $20k), I still can't be too upset.

The last three days I've played I've made a final table so that's pretty amazing especially considering the low volume I put in (I only played 4 tourneys tonight). My bankroll is comfy again too, which just takes a lot of stress off.

A big part of me is considering just coasting into next year with a nice profitable December and not really playing anymore this month, but we'll see how bored I get.

Errands

I haven't played much because I am just getting stuff done. Yardwork/x-mas shopping/cooking/etc. We are going to be doing quite a bit of family/friend visits as well these next 4 weeks so I definitely won't get a full schedule in this month.

This weekend my father-in-law comes. Next week I go to Dallas to visit my sister and fam. X-mas week we have some friends from Wisco coming in. And then New Years we have my sister's family coming in.

I will try and get a session in tonight and the rest of this week until my suegro comes in on Friday.

Big steps

I won the $55 Freeze out on Stars for over $15k today. It feels great to win again and plowing through a field that big (almost 2000 entries) is really tough. Basically I won back everything I lost playing cash, so I am just vowing to myself that I won't play cash anymore. I win money playing tourneys, I lose money playing cash - so it should be a no brainer.

Anyhoo - my wife is off tonight and tomorrow, so I'm taking a little time off and then I'll be back at it next week.

Small Steps

I got 3rd in the afternoon $55 tourney on Fulltilt. I still felt a little (ok a lot) deflated as I got reamed/coolered in 2 huge hands late. It's easy to say all you can do is get it in good and focus on your play not the results, it's a lot harder to swallow when 3rd place is 2700 and 1st is 6k.

The nice part is that I finally had a positive day after so many consecutive losing days. The bad part is that it really only covers about 3 days of losses.

I am playing really really well though, so I feel a big score coming...

Volume is tiring

I played really well this afternoon, but didn't get much of a break in during the afternoon like I usually do and played like poo tonight. It was my first time playing like poo for a while so I just need to make sure not to play when I'm tired.

Tomorrow is another day...

Poker time

Well, I finally have like a two week window where I can put in a lot of volume. November was really frustrating because I played so little in terms of tourneys and I never got a real good score, and I was playing quite a bit of cash which just went horribly so my bankroll has suffered.

The last two days I have (and will be) playing a lot of tourneys, and I am playing great, but just not getting rewarded. Yesterday was full of bad beats which just shows I am getting it in way ahead. Today was not bad beats as much as it was just never winning a race when I really needed to.

My bankroll is now the lowest it has been for months, and I am anxious to get it back up again, but I need to make sure to just keep playing well otherwise I have a tendency to get overaggressive trying to make things happen and I just blow up opportunities to make deep runs.