Life in Chicago is great too. Nate, Meyvis, and their Yale friend Robert came to visit a few weeks ago and I had a great time with them bar hopping, playing guitar hero, and going to my first Cubs game at Wrigley. I also went home to see my Great Uncle Nelson from Peru last weekend. Richard, Laura, and Jennifer came to town as well, and we all managed to get in some really good skiing & wakeboarding time at the lake, which was nice. I know you guys are reading this, so come visit me in Chicago sometime.
Poker has been going pretty well lately too. I've been playing lots of very short sessions this month, most of which are under an hour, and I'm on track to have a really great month (my goal is 20k). I'm playing the best poker of my life right now, so hopefully i can keep it up and post my best month ever.
My last video for CardRunners was posted on Monday, and I was pretty nervous about the feedback it would receive from the membership. The goal of the video was to show how to play deepstacked against the "tough" regulars at 100NL. Unfortunately, things didnt go as planned, and I ended up losing over $300 (>3 buyins!) during the video, making it my biggest loss ever in a video by far. Most of the hands I lost were due to running bad or just getting into some really bad spots (obviously nothing I have control over), but I felt that I gave some really good commentary throughout and played pretty well for the most part.
Still, I was worried that I'd get hammered in the feedback for not putting up better results, but luckily my assumption couldn't have been more wrong. This video garnered some of the best feedback I've ever gotten, probably because every serious poker player has had many many bad sessions like the one I had in my video. I went out of my way to describe how one should handle these situations when they (inevitably) happen: you have to stop playing *immediately* and take a break at least 15min long before playing again. And when you do return, you MUST find completely new tables to sit at, preferably with all different people at them.
After introducing this concept in detail, I proceeded to take my own advice and paused the video for 15min to take a break of my own. I closed all of my tables and found new ones to play at for the remainder of the video. I think this really drove my point home and was probably the reason my video got such great reviews.
I really wish I had more time for poker; like I said above I feel that I'm playing the best I have ever played, and I'm still very committed to improving my game. It also sucks that I had to stop giving private lessons since I really enjoy teaching the game and it was a great, consistent way to earn a good amount of money. Unfortunately I don't forsee myself having enough free time for this anytime soon. :(
That's it for now...hopefully I'll start posting more than twice per month again.
