Damn Ringer's Poker Blog

He updated his blog so I suppose I need to update mine as to not be the last blog on people’s lists.

March was a pretty decent month but once again I manage to play absolutely no volume. I put in 40k hands. Here’s the graph:

Ran at about 4ptbb, which was good. I just need to play more often now. I have been trying to focus on beating regs since it looks like that is going to be the new standard. I have been breaking down alot of hands and actually going through hands ranges that regs play, 3b, call 3b, and 4b with in HEM. There’s only a few regs I can do that with since it requires ALOT of hands to break down that kind of analysis.

I ran over EV finally this month too! I ran about 5 bi’s above EV which was great. I finally didn’t feel like I was getting sucked out on every hand I got it in with. My ptbb/100 w/ EV included was 3.4ptbb which is pretty much my winrate across all of my 1/2 play.

I had a pretty exciting March on the life front. I went to vegas which was a blast. I played a bit of poker but mostly just drank and did bachelor party activities. We stayed at TI and actually liked their poker room. They spread a 1/3nl game which seems to attract alot of drunk pool “fish”. It’s right on the walk back from the pool which is pretty nice. I also saw how miserable my life could be as a real life grinder. There were a few live pros who grinded that game and the 2/5 game that sometimes runs in the evenings. The grinders were pretty nice in general except for one guy who was a pretty big dick. That being said, he was a pretty big dick after I showed him a big bluff. I have a pretty big issue with going into a 1/3nl game and getting bombed drunk and then spouting off about poker knowledge while breaking essentially even due to running obnoxious plays. I can’t just sit there quietly and pretend like I don’t understand why 5 people are calling $10 preflop. I guess its just to boring for me to stay in good poker form. The not caring about actual profit probably doesn’t help either. I managed to break about even on the trip gambling wise but spent an ass-load on plane tickets.

I’m planning another vegas trip with my GF and best friend in july. That will be my attempt to sub for my trip to vegas for the summer last year. I know as soon as I start seeing pictures from my poker friends on FB, I’m gonna be ridiculously jealous. I hope everyone has a great trip this year out there as probably by the next blog post, everyone will be there haha.

On a sidenote, Taxes suck ass. I submitted my tax stuff to my CPA again this year, and I already know I’m gonna have to pay a likely unheard of amount of money even with paying quarterlies all year. I am hoping the amount comes out lower than I think it will. Got my fingers crossed that the bill doesn’t come back massive. That being said, I wish I didn’t have to pay taxes on “gambling winnings”! Damn you, Al Capone.

April is off to a good start but the games are starting to look even more reggy. My goals for April will be to run at +4ptbb, take some shots at 2/4nl when the games are good, and post more strategy questions on 2p2. I think that’s about all I got.

I managed to create some time today to blog a little bit. I have been using all the time I have recently to try and grind. I’ve already played 20k hands in march and that’s basically unheard of. I’ve had maybe one other month where I’ve grinded 60k hands. Hopefully, I can put in some at least reasonable volume and actually pretend like I would like to save up for a down payment on a house this year. That being said, I don’t want to buy a house this year.

I’ve had an epiphany that putting in 30k hands a month is just not acceptable though. It’s not acceptable on the money front. I’ll still make 60k year doing that, but its completely unacceptable on the laziness front. I am spending almost no time actually grinding when I play 30k hands in a month. I could be at least doubling that profit. I am planning to start buckling down Monday through Friday night and really get some volume in and then take some vacations in the middle.

I went to visit my girlfriend a few times in February. I can’t really bring my entire desktop with me, nor do I really want to. I have a laptop that I bought for the purpose of grinding on the road with, but I really can’t play cascaded tables effectively. Solution: Rush poker. It’s perfect for what I’m trying to do. The games are a little crazier but for the most part the same thing as normal Full ring. I get in as many hands as I could 16 tabling by just playing 4 tables. I’ve had pretty good success with it. The rush poker will definitely help me meet my goals of 60k hands while I’m on the road as I tend to grind at least 3 hours of rush at a time. Its basically perfect.

Speaking of february here’s my results minus the 1500 or so I shipped playing rush on my laptop…

+$3k in coaching so about an 8k February overall

I’ve been coaching a ton recently, and its been a pretty damn enjoyable distraction from poker. I’ve been helping my students get their games on track and really focus on their mistakes. I’m beginning to amaze myself with how far I’ve come in the coaching game. I started coaching a few years ago and really had no idea what to do or how to express my thoughts on the game. Recently, I’ve gotten so much better at verbalizing everything and making each student hold themselves accountable. I’ve had several of my hardest working students really climb the ranks into the next limit or even up 2 limits. I have a slightly reduced coaching schedule for March but its slowly starting to fill up again. So let me throw a plug on here, if you are stuggling to beat 50nl or 100nl FR games, feel free to contact me about coaching. I have an excellent record of vastly improving winrates of my students at those limits. /self promotion

I have a few things planned in march already. Firstly, I have a trip to atlantic city planned on saturday. I really am not one for atlantic city but it sounded like a pretty fun time with a bunch of people I really like. I will be doing very little gambling and maybe a little poker. I have a feeling I’ll be more interested in the drinking and carrying on part though. Atlantic city is just such a trashy place that I get turned off by just about everything. The following thursday however, I have a trip to vegas planned. It’s a bachelor party for the weekend with one of my old roommates being the bachelor. I am going with a group of guys who love to blackout while drinking and have a ridiculous time. Its going to be a REALLY ugly situation but likely one of the most fun trips I’ve ever had. I look forward to it though. Haven’t been to vegas in awhile.

I actually ended up staying an extra day in vegas by myself cause I’m such an airfare nit that I didn’t want to pay the extra $300 for flying home on sunday. I was planning on staying with a friend when I bought tickets but I didn’t actually confirm they would be around. I checked to see if they were around and boom. Not there. So I don’t have a place to stay on sunday night. If anyone lives close to the strip and would be interseted in hanging on sunday or monday, let me know. I’ll be bored likely grinding all day with live poker (kill me now).

Anyways, I got a lesson scheduled now so I can’t blog aimlessly any longer. Until next time.

Full Tilt Poker gets my bravo for their recent actions. I’ve kinda been all over poker sites for the last 2 years. I spent a year at Cake Poker and before that have played Stars, Paradise and Party. Full Tilt has gone from a cartoony site to a true industry leader.

Its incredible to think that just 2 weeks ago there were an average 4 shortstackers per table on Full Tilt mid-stakes full ring tables. Literally over night the games went from ok/bad to amazing. Full Tilt hasn’t gotten enough praise for this risky move in my opinion. They literally closed the door on hundreds (if not thousands) of players who put in very good volume and said they weren’t interested in their business. This is a pretty damn tough thing to do in any aspect of life especially business. Turning off a known fixture for promise of a better situation. I was thinking today while playing that I have completely forgotten about shortstackers ever playing in my games and that’s pretty F-ing awesome.

The shortstackers were claiming that fish liked to buyin for the table minimum and that if they raised the minimum they would scare the fish away… couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve played with more deep stacked fish than ever in the past 2 weeks. Its just funny to think with all the threats and possible things that could go wrong, it would appear by just listening to their bread and butter customers Full tilt has knocked one out of the park. I think this is going to be a very good sign for things to come with the site. They have already added more new features to help make their software smoother since D-Day (doom day for the shortstackers). I was talking to another regular on FTP today and we were talking about FTP doing the little things.

I hadn’t really thought about it, but FTP has been adding little features constantly since i’ve moved back over from cake poker. I really think its software is better than stars now. If FTP ends up creating a system to reward their regulars on top of rakeback, i think stars is done for in the cash game department.

All that praise said, I think there is probably some serious caution that FTP will need to exercise in the future. They are turning into a genie in a bottle recently. They essentially do what is asked of them and that’s really something amazing. But with this there is going to be ideas that just plan don’t work. They are going to sink money into an idea that sounds good on paper but doesn’t work. I hope that the powers to be realize that failure on some level is going to happen and to not be stubborn. Just let those ideas that didn’t work go, and move onto the next awesome feature that looks good on paper.

Notice I haven’t mentioned Rush poker yet. I think this is an amazing idea by them, but i don’t think its going to ever really pan out. I give it probably another 3 months before the only games running of it are 50nl and below. I don’t see any interest staying maintained. If rush poker does end up not being as big a hit as thought, I hope FTP has the guts to admit it didn’t work and not try to force it down the players throats.

I look forward to things to come in the future from FTP. I have a feeling that if online poker ever gets completely “legalized” that FTP will be there first making crazy innovations. I, for one, am pretty happy with FTP being the leader of the industry and of innovation in the industry.

***sorry ahead of time for typos… I don’t feel like proofreading this monster***

Its 4am, I just finished watching 3 episodes of South Park, a Daily Show and a Colbert. I also just read the entire Muk well on 2p2. I think its a safe bet, I’m not as tired as I wanna be. This blog might actually be one of those epic ones that is completely TL;DR. I’m on my laptop in bed, so sadly I don’t have fun graphs or any fun pictures.

First things first, one of the players I personally have grown to respect the most and personally think is an awesome guy, GoMukYaself is doing a well on 2p2. Its a phenomenal read so far, and I’ve never partaken in a well before but i’m gonna change that with him. For those that don’t know, a “well” as its called is a poker player starting a thread saying essentially “ask any question and I will answer”. I’d always personally had it on my to-do list if I ever became big time enough for people to care about my answers. However, after reading some of the questions people ask you on these things, I’m not sure. The one that stands out is being asked by another man how often you do your own deed. I mean if that’s not the most awkward question to ask another male over the internet, I dunno what is. Here’s the link to his “well” for those intersted or too internet stupid to get their on their own… http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/117/medium-high-stakes-full-ring/well-gomukyaself-693792/

Another ridiculous thread that I think is now finally over was the Jason Ho coaching scam. I personally don’t know the guy or any of his students but the entire situation is a complete shit show. If you wanna read about that whole ordeal, here’s the link: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/where-did-jason-ho-thread-get-moved-695466/ Its a really long thread but the basic jest of it is the following: a coach allegedly lied or coerced students into giving him money, he’s allegedly a bankrupt deadbeat and he makes some pretty incriminating posts in the thread in my eyes.

Being very active in the coaching world myself, I see on basically a daily basis how much your students trust you as a teacher. They hire you and for the most part give you the reigns to their bankroll. I did always think that coaching could be a very dangerous thing in the control of a bad person. I’m not calling Jason Ho a bad person at all because like I said, I don’t know a thing about the dude other than what is alleged. I am just saying its a situation where if I weren’t honest or wanted to rip someone off, I could easily do it and get away with it. Luckily, I respect my reputation as well as my conscious. I find it ridiculously interesting however to see just how far it really was possible to take advantage or people. I guess that’s really all I have to say about that. I’ll end this segment by saying, never trust anyone on the web with a transfer or your passwords. I know its common sense but sometimes you get messages from “pros” and feel obligated. I know I have. Just keep the dick attitude and tell other “random” players “absolutely not” unless you are 100% comfortable.

Let me segue that talk about coaching scandal into a paragraph about my own coaching. I personally have the highest volume of students I’ve ever had at the moment. I currently have 8 students with another in the wings and have been contacted on a nearly daily basis by interested parties. I always love having a number of students. It might sound ridiculous but its always a learning experience for me taking on a new student. Every student I’ve ever had has brought something new to the table and at the very least reminded me of something simple I had forgotten and at the most actually made me better. I am still taking students so please don’t take this as me saying I have too many students. I am never going to be a guy who steamlines his coaching and cookiecuts his students. That said perhaps I need to up the price as everyone seems to think they are getting a bargain . Sorry that paragraph kinda rambled. Cliffnotes: I have gotten alot of interest in my coaching recently, I love coaching, and I am not overloaded.

So I was talking to my parents today, they just got back from a 3 week trip to New Zealand and Austrailia. I was giving them the update on my life and I came to realize I’ve basically accomplished accidentally everything I wanted to do awhile back. I just booked a trip to Europe for Oktoberfest (travel abroad). I am starting volunteering for the American Cancer Society on wednesday (volunteer). I have a ton of coaching opportunties (focus more on incorporating myself). I am on the p90x workout plan and loving every second of it (get fit and stop being a lazy dick). My days now have some congruency to them. I coach in the afternoons, workout in the evening, coach a little more, play poker (work) from 11pm til around 3am. Sleep and do it again. Its definitely no 9 to 5 but I feel better about myself and have more human interaction than I did basically all of last year. Pretty cool that I did all that stuff without even trying… it just sorta happened.

As far as the poker goes… rigged January is over, and it was another down month and it will mark the first time in my pro career i’ve had back-to-back losing months. I have moved back to 200nl for the time being. Especially with tax season coming up, I want to make sure I don’t overextend myself as I really don’t want to drop my online roll below a comfortable shottaking level and I don’t want to pull money out of stocks or savings. I hope I don’t run badly through April as that would be incredibly disheartening. I am focusing alot on my non-sd winnings for the time being and trying really hard not to give money away post-flop and focus on spots to win pots that I would usually squander. I think that’s my personal biggest leak. I fire bets and just give up on them. I know its my biggest leak, but for some reaosn I’ve just never made a conscious effort to eliminate it. I will be focusing on that for february and try to have a break even red line for once. Did i just admit that my red line isn’t positive? Imagine that. Won’t hear a winning mid/low stakes reg admit that very often.

As you can tell by this blog post, I’m pretty happy with my life at the moment. I have surrounded myself with people that make me happy and its doing wonders for me. I would usually be at stressed factor 5 having 2 losing months in a row, but I’ve set myself up financially at this point for it really not to be a big deal. I will win again, and this will seem like a hilarious period where I overadjusted my game to try and get levels above. My support group is perfect at the moment. I owe that alot to such good friends and in part to a good girlfriend. I look forward to 2010 being more profitable than 2009, but if it isn’t I suppose I’ll survive.

oh and here’s a picture that made me laugh out loud at my desk…

So I’ve been kinda all over the board with poker recently. The running bad hasn’t stopped and has led to the inevitable playing bad. I’m treading water but that’s kinda boring so on the poker front. Just know that I’m not doing well this month. There have been a ton of new amazing updates in the poker world though. Rush poker is amazing. Alot of people have been bitching that it will ruin poker, and its perfectly possible. But anything that allows me to play 2000 hands of poker in an hour is absolutely amazing. I don’t know if I’m good at it yet either. I have been pretty much breaking even mostly due to the fact that I like to play like an idiot alot. The regular games look good too without shortstackers. Most people are very anti-shortstacker and I’m certainly no different. I wanted them gone because i just couldn’t beat them and had to play around them. It was very annoying. Thankfully, we’ll be seeing ya shorties. Start full stacking.

I made a new year’s resolution that I wouldn’t eat anything with a drive thru in 2010. I’ve done fine on that resolution so far, but I managed to fall into a new one as well. I started doing p90x (a set of workout DVD’s). It’s a pretty intense workout program that requires you to work hard for 90 days to see results. So far, I’ve really enjoyed it. I look forward to the workout time every day. The best part is that it has me doing exercises I would never do on my own and working me way harder than I ever would work myself. Its like my own personal trainer. I’m by no means a fat guy but i’m certainly not in shape. I have been just constantly putting on weight over the last 2 years and i guess its time to stop. I weigh 195 and am 6′1 at the moment which I think makes me fat. I’m 2 weeks in and have no desire to quit. I will try to update the blog a little more regularly with results and developments about the workout plan.

That’s about all i got.

Well Happy New Year Guys! I have been kinda all over the place between spending a week at the beach. I had a terrible end to the year and its really been messing with me mentally. The mid-stakes kinda did a number on me… and i’m trying to recover mentally. Here’s my graph from December…

click to enlarge

I’ve been trying to step down to 200nl to recover and just get my groove back. That graph doesn’t include about 1.5k worth of losses from my laptop. I ended down on the year and down on mid-stakes.

The new year so far has been less than lovely, but that’s mostly from the confidence I lost in my play and making bad decisions on the tables. I also keep making decisions to play on my laptop and that’s really been ugly. I finally looked at my laptop database and my non-sd winnings are going straight down and i’m playing something like a 14/10. I am going to stop grinding on my laptop for the time being until I can learn to cascade profitably.

One side note, I joined twitter and will be updating quite regularly. Alot of it will just be gibbish about my life and daily happenings but feel free to follow me. My screen name is damnringer on there.

I’ll try to update the blog again soon with a life update as there’s been quite alot happening. I just figured I need to update something here, cause you guys are getting restless! Later.

November is wrapping up and good lord was it swongy! Here’s the graph…

Click to Enlarge

I’ll get the generic bitching out of the way first:

[x] I ran 2k under ev
[x] I run terrible @ 2/4
[x] Should have been a 10k month
[ ] I was actually tilted by these swings

All that said, these months happen. They can’t always been rainbows and butterflys with a straight line to the moon. I had to rearrange my schedule a bit to start taking 2/4nl shots. I could play mornings at 1/2nl and really only worry about playing with Ren as other decent competition. The 2/4nl tables in the morning tend to not only be crap but also there’s like 8 running. I have started going to bed at closer to 5am or 6am now as to allow maximum grind window at 2/4nl. I think I played fine this month all things considered just a bumpy one.

Now onto the life part of the blog post, my thanksgiving was great. I ate an abundance of ridiculously delicious food and my mother has once again outdone herself on the awesomeness of the food. We did thanksgiving with just my immediate family and a close friend of my sisters’. This is absolutely the way I prefer my holiday dinners. My other relatives that live close to us tend to be a little stuffy and “proper”. We did thanksgiving there last year and while it was great, I just like being inappropriate at the drop of a hat and that just isn’t the place for it. My family dinner however, is the place. This is, of course, the people that raised me. Other than the holidays, It’s been a pretty relaxed month.

A group of my friends have decided we want to a murder mystery party. If you are up to date on the office series, you know exactly what inspired us. We are doing it this Friday, and I’m ridiculously excited about it. It will be a “Las Vegas Murder”. Its not often that you can pull together 15 friends for an “in-character” murder mystery party. I will be playing the part of a womanizing black jack dealer… not too far from mark i suppose. If this one goes well, we will likely be doing these on a semi-regular basis. It should be sick, oh and not to mention there will be an open bar. Watching people stay on objectives while 8 beers deep should be interesting at best. Could be the greatest party of all time, or a complete disaster.

I suppose I should address a few other things. I’m still hooked up call of duty: MW2. I’m still hooked on mario party parties. I’ve been a total slack-a-potamus on the working out. Dreary weather for some reason just makes me not want to put heavy things in the air repeatedly. I passed on an Atlantic City trip this past weekend for no reason other than “i didn’t feel like it”.

I think that just about sums up everything. Til next time, Collini Out!

November 2009 does mark the first time in over a year I’ve been grinding 2/4 and felt 100% comfortable. I am going to try to stay at 400nl as long as I feel like I’m a winner there. Right now, I feel like I did back 2 years ago when I was grinding 2/4nl on the side.

For those that don’t understand the terminology above, I am moving up stakes from a $200 buyin to a $400 buyin. This in essence means I have to win at half the rate i did before to make the same amount. I will likely make more than half my rate so therefore, I’ve given myself a raise and gotten myself positioned to be a 2/4nl reg for 2010.

I realized that I couldn’t handle playing 1/2nl for another year, or else I would go insane and I gotta get moving somehow. Making 80 to 100k a year sounds really awesome now but in 5 years if I’m still only making that, I’ll have really undershot my personal poker and life goals. That’s the reason I’ve been trying so hard to make the move up to 2/4nl recently.

The only thing that was holding me back before was some ridiculous mental block I had where I got play happy when $200 was in the middle. I managed to fix that and am playing a little tighter than I was previously. I am shooting to run a 16/12 or something in that ballpark for 400nl. This is what I think will be optimal because of the number of shortstackers as well as guys who can pick off a player running 20/15 pretty easily.

I also find myself really playing well and getting my blood pumping playing 400nl. This is something I lost play 200nl about as soon as I started playing 200nl. I was just so overrolled for it, playing a $400 pot just didn’t phase me. I find myself excited about playing at 2/4 now. I think that will probably pass with time as I get overrolled for 2/4 but that’s why there’s 3/6. That said, I’m probably a little overrolled for 2/4 but its still in the ballpark of the real number one would need to play 2/4 full time.

This blog post might be a little ahead of itself too. I have only put in 10k hands at 2/4 and have managed to keep a WR of 2ptbb (which is low but I think a decent win rate while I’m still learning the players). Hopefully, I don’t write this, then go on some crazy downswing and end up back at busto 1/2nl. It’d have to be a hell of a downswing however. I find myself in a place now where I’m not going to need to withdrawal money for at least 6 months probably closer to 1 year. I am going to take a serious run at the mid-stakes and high stakes now. I have the skills now to make it there (unlike 2 years ago when I was dr. nittinstein).

Its a pretty sweet feeling realizing you’ve done such a good job all year, you deserve a raise… and then giving it to yourself. Wish me luck!

Man, Its really been an entire year since I last worked a full time job. That’s pretty ridiculous to think about. My life is wildly different than I thought it would be too. Here’s the graph from when I got laid off from my engineering job, and profit with rakeback included:

Click to Enlarge

I would also post a picture of my hourly rate, but honestly I’m not 100% sure what it is. I played so much on cake before the holdem manager software was fully compatible with it. I would assume based off my time on full tilt that my hourly rate was somewhere in the ballpark of $100/hr. That sounds way better than it is. That hourly rate is probably middle of pack among 200nl regulars.

The year in 3 paragraphs…

Most of the year I ran fine. I maintained a 3.5ptbb WR at 200nl and a 2.5ptbb WR at 400nl. I think I am good enough to have had both of those. However, I would soon realize I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was. As the cake games got worse and worse, I realized how incredibly exploitable I was in 3bet and 4bet pots. I was playing very very straight forward and had a fold to 3b close to 80%. I was just getting abused by good regulars while still crushing fish. This caught up with me quickly once the fish left the cake games and I was stuck playing against 6 of the same regs. Queue the BE stretch.

I kinda have come to consider that my run bad time. It was in that time that I didn’t feel like ballin in vegas, had my ex-gf do some skanky things, and was just really frustrated with my game. On top of that stuff, I had 2 moves to deal with (from vegas to charlotte then from charlotte to DC). It was a pretty stressful time, and it just seemed that bad thing after bad thing was happening. In retrospect, however it likely wasn’t all me just running bad. I realized how nitty I really was when I got half-way into Vegas. I finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t as good as I thought, about that time.

I completely started focusing on getting better and with the help of a particularly fantastic cow and visor wearing gentleman, I turned on my boomswitch again. That is figurative however, because I now think I’m in the top 5 best regulars at 200nl which means I could move to 400nl with very little problem. With the revamp and rethinking in my game, I know that I am more than capable of playing well in just about every poker type. I even have been winning at headsup play (which is something I could never do even at the lowest stakes).

Where does it go from here?

One year, I have moved locations twice. I have almost hit the revolve button on my best friends. I have hit the “go die” button on an ex. I have completely revamped my game from a 14/12 to 20/15. While all that sounds like it’d be pretty life changing, it really has been pretty normal. Poker is funny like that, you just learn to roll with the bad beats.

I like where I’m living (only because I don’t commute). I really like the people I see on a daily basis while still keepin in touch with my friends from charlotte. And I think I’m playing the best poker of my life. Everything evolves and this year has been the biggest evolution of my life.

I went from following the middle class American path to glory to something that truly brought me great joy. I love the fact that I got laid off one year ago. I don’t know that I ever would have actually had the balls to quit on my own, and just take the plunge into professional poker. While I haven’t made as much money as I was hoping, I still have enjoyed every day I get to make my own schedule. Every trip I get to take for 5 days, on a Wednesday or for 3 months.

I can’t wait to see what changes this coming year. Its turning into a book I’m reading where I just wait to see what happens next, as it seems that something I’m least expecting always happens. I’ll be gunning for the next year to be far more profitable and to become an even better player while learning from all the experiences of the past year. Also, I’m going to focus on giving back to the world as well.

I’ll be playing professional poker at least until my lease is up in august next year. To be honest though, the way things are going now, I can’t see myself ever truly being happy with a 9 to 5 job… but then again who really is happy with a 9 to 5 job? With money not being an issue, there’s no reason to work.

Hopefully this isn’t turning into a habit for me, but I have lost the bug to play again. It’s like I work so hard to get a month complete and feeling really good about my game then I almost push the reset button on my drive. I think it comes from the fact that I basically live in months where people with jobs live in years. I shoot for a monthly goal and then if I meet it, I’m content and have a feeling of pride. This in-turn i suppose leads to having no interest in playing the next few days of a month. That said, I have played around 6k hands, and have run about $1k under EV. Probably leading to my lack of love for the game at the moment.

I have been trying to move to 400nl, but to be honest its really almost impossible with the times I play. The games are just so infested with shortstackers and there’s so few games, there’s almost no way to do it. I have been subbing in 1/2 deep and 1/2 ante deep tables to play to the size of those games. I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea of $800 pots again, but I am not comfortable with playing against 7 ssers. Lets hope that FTP finds a fix to this issue and stat.

Enough Poker.

The hokies suck. Haha. I went to the game, and got blitzed while hanging with some pretty awesome friends so i can’t complain too much. That said, that was the least amount of fun I could have possibly had in blacksburg without getting arrested. See Fuppnasty on FTP for hilarious stories about being arrested. Either way, that was great fun minus the hokies sucking part.

We came back on saturday morning so we could do halloween in DC. I dressed up as “rocking out with your cock out”. This is something new for me. Usually I do awesome costumes but I’ve never gone the raunchy route, and I don’t think I’m doing it again. It was a huge hit among my friends, but basically everybody I spoke with at the bar was kinda creeped out. The fake unbuttoned fly looked so real that I think people actually thought I had my pants unbuttoned all night, thus I creeped people out. I think in the future of my halloween onwards I will be something cute, cuddly and fun. Here’s the pic of me from halloween:

Its just a fake fly that went over my real jeans.

We tried to go to the biggest party in northern VA at a place called clarendon ballroom. This went over terrible as by 8pm there was a line that was literally around the block and it was already 1 in and 1 out. We aborted that plan and went to another bar which was actually surprisingly not packed because the fire marshall was there making sure they didn’t go over capacity. It was great, and definitely the least packed i’d ever seen that bar. We basically had the patio to ourselves.

I went a few “dates” to movies in the past weeks. I went to go see “the invention of lying” which I thought was really funny and clever, but I was the only person in the theater laughing, which made things awkward. I also saw “zombieland” which was pretty great. I liked that it didn’t really go anywhere but just murdering zombies. I have a few more movies I’d like to see, but that will likely be with dudes instead of with a girl as apparently I love burning bridges with chicks right now.

That’s basically all that is exciting. We have another hokie game tonight, and I honestly don’t care if we lose or not. But I will be throwing down for it. So on that note, LETS GO! BUD LIGHT!!!

Lets hope i get some motivation to play some volume before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out… cause ain’t nothing getting done for days after that thing drops. Have a good weekend ya’ll.

Also, Look forward to a “1 Year as a Pro” post coming up in the next week or so. I will discuss how much my life has changed and how stress-less being a professional poker player really is when you do it right.