I'm gonna try moving my blog to the new CardRunners site for awhile since that's what so much of my life revolves around these days. Link to my new blog -- you might need to sign up for a free basic account to view it, but hopefully not.
I'm gonna try to dual-post here and on CR for awhile, but I hope to eventually only post to one of the two. Let me know if you guys run into problems trying to view the CR blog.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
If I were homeless...
...my ass definitely wouldn't be anywhere near Chicago during the winter. Or ever, for that matter, since it gets REALLY FREAKING COLD up here. Not to be a dick about it or anything, but the first priority in my mind if I were homeless in a big city like NYC or Chicago would be to get the hell down south to somewhere warm. I'm sure I could scrape together like $40 for a Greyhound ticket to Miami in a few days by panhandling, stealing from tourists, or selling non-vital organs on the black market. Get creative people!
I just got back from a (failed) downtown excursion, the sole purpose of which was to get my iPhone replaced because it doesn't ring anymore. It still vibrates but the ring is almost inaudible. This happened to me a few weeks back too, and it magically fixed itself after I did a restore on it. Problem solved? Nope -- just a few days later the same thing happened, so I restored it again. This time it took about two weeks before screwing itself up again, so I took it to the Apple store downtown and they said they had to do a restore on it before looking at the hardware itself for defects. Whaddya know, it worked just fine afterwards and they basically told me that it was a problem with iTunes and not my phone. So apparently uninstalling and then re-installing iTunes will solve all of my problems, which sounds like a bunch of BS to me. I told the guy I'd be back in a week when it stops ringing again, and he said to make sure I tried re-installing iTunes before coming back in. Obv I'll give it a shot, but I'm not optimistic...
On a side note, this was my first time inside an Apple store, and I must say I'm very impressed at how the company is run. Everything is well thought out, and it's a great sales environment; I can see why their stock is doing so well. They even have a big seminar area which runs their "getting a Mac will solve all of your computing problems forever" propaganda / TV ads on a loop between informative seminars on how to use various features in bundled Mac software.
Don't get me wrong: Apple makes some really great products. I came very, very close to buying a 15" Macbook Pro last month (on which I would have run XP MCE); the primary reason I chose Dell over Apple was because I could get a higher resolution screen with the Dell (1680x1050) vs the Mac's fixed 1440x900. Once you go to high-res monitors you can't go back, and I've been spoiled by my 24" LCD @ 1920x1200 for almost 3 years now.
So after failing at the Apple store, I headed to Filene's Basement to pick up some new corduroys, and they only had one pair in my size in the whole freaking store. I also needed to pick up some long underwear for my upcoming ski trip to Canada, but once again I sifted through the hoards of Large, XL, & XXL to come up short in my quest for a medium. God I run bad @ clothes.
...and the damn clothes manufacturers never learn either. There's *always* huge stockpiles of Large, XL, & XXL and rarely any mediums or smalls. I swear, if I didn't already have some great business ideas in the works I'd open a sweatshop and hire a bunch of Vietnamese children for $.12/hr to make nothing but clothes in adult small and medium sizes. I'd be a multi-millionaire in no time!
Time for a nap
I just got back from a (failed) downtown excursion, the sole purpose of which was to get my iPhone replaced because it doesn't ring anymore. It still vibrates but the ring is almost inaudible. This happened to me a few weeks back too, and it magically fixed itself after I did a restore on it. Problem solved? Nope -- just a few days later the same thing happened, so I restored it again. This time it took about two weeks before screwing itself up again, so I took it to the Apple store downtown and they said they had to do a restore on it before looking at the hardware itself for defects. Whaddya know, it worked just fine afterwards and they basically told me that it was a problem with iTunes and not my phone. So apparently uninstalling and then re-installing iTunes will solve all of my problems, which sounds like a bunch of BS to me. I told the guy I'd be back in a week when it stops ringing again, and he said to make sure I tried re-installing iTunes before coming back in. Obv I'll give it a shot, but I'm not optimistic...
On a side note, this was my first time inside an Apple store, and I must say I'm very impressed at how the company is run. Everything is well thought out, and it's a great sales environment; I can see why their stock is doing so well. They even have a big seminar area which runs their "getting a Mac will solve all of your computing problems forever" propaganda / TV ads on a loop between informative seminars on how to use various features in bundled Mac software.
Don't get me wrong: Apple makes some really great products. I came very, very close to buying a 15" Macbook Pro last month (on which I would have run XP MCE); the primary reason I chose Dell over Apple was because I could get a higher resolution screen with the Dell (1680x1050) vs the Mac's fixed 1440x900. Once you go to high-res monitors you can't go back, and I've been spoiled by my 24" LCD @ 1920x1200 for almost 3 years now.
So after failing at the Apple store, I headed to Filene's Basement to pick up some new corduroys, and they only had one pair in my size in the whole freaking store. I also needed to pick up some long underwear for my upcoming ski trip to Canada, but once again I sifted through the hoards of Large, XL, & XXL to come up short in my quest for a medium. God I run bad @ clothes.
...and the damn clothes manufacturers never learn either. There's *always* huge stockpiles of Large, XL, & XXL and rarely any mediums or smalls. I swear, if I didn't already have some great business ideas in the works I'd open a sweatshop and hire a bunch of Vietnamese children for $.12/hr to make nothing but clothes in adult small and medium sizes. I'd be a multi-millionaire in no time!
Time for a nap
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Baking soda is overrated
Yeah, you heard me. It's time people found out the truth about keeping a box of baking soda in the fridge to make it smell good: baking soda can't hold a candle to leftover Margherita pizza when it comes to making your fridge smell awesome. Plus, you can eat the pizza when you get hungry, whereas baking soda is totally disgusting. Try to tell me I'm wrong here.
Poker-wise, I'm having a good month so far. I've been running about average of late, and I'm trying to put in a bunch of hands early in the month since I'll be traveling during the latter half of December. Since leaving Accenture, I've been trying to play about 2hrs every day, even if it's at lower stakes than 5/10. The games are so much easier at 3/6 and 2/4 that I've preferred playing a bunch of tables at those stakes as of late instead of grinding it out with a table full of regulars at 5/10 all day. I still feel like I have an edge on most of the regulars at 5/10, but I just don't enjoy it as much unless the games are good. I'm pretty sure I have one of the highest winrates at 5/10 over the past few months (just over 7.1ptbb/100 in my last ~40k hands), however I think it's more important for me to play games that I enjoy instead of simply playing the highest stakes I can consistently beat.
A few interesting hands I haven't blogged about yet:
Ace high is the nuts -- whitelime is a very good, aggressive player and I wasn't about to fold this monster to him. This was from the CR / "Bad Beat on Cancer" Foundation freeroll SNG that I won in November. I donated the $200 I won from this SNG to charity. :)
I got owned pretty hard here, even though this guy's play is atrocious. I was pretty sure this guy was a donkey, but WTF?!
Just because I check behind doesn't mean I don't have a hand -- this guy cursed me in the chat, then proceeded to tilt off his stack by cold 4-shoving JTo from the button for ~50bb the very next hand. :(
I sucked out pretty bad here. It felt nice to finally dish out a horrendous beat. :)
I did a sweat session with Derric last night while he 12-tabled 2/4NL full ring, and holy crap he's such a nit. Maybe you just have to be to play full ring, but I was constantly surprised at how tight he was playing. So he returned the favor this afternoon by watching me play 3/6 & 5/10 on FTP for about two hours. Unfortunately I ran like absolute dogshit the entire time and was down about $4k at one point, finishing down about $1600 overall. I really enjoy having other good players sweat me and discuss hands while I'm playing; this process is how I learn best.
My plans for the night fell through, so after a few hours' break I headed back to the tables. Here are the interesting/big hands:
Derric didn't like this shove, but I was pretty sure my opponent didn't have anything.
Sigh, I still run bad against donks. Luckily things turned around later in the sesh :)
Kids at home: this is why you don't slowplay. This guy was a pretty big donkey though, and he snap-called my river shove. This hand was important to in allowing me to take a good amount of his stack later on (see next hand).
My turn shove really was for value, I swear. It's obviously pretty thin, but this guy was a huge donk (although he was quite aggressive) who led very big OOP (often for full pot) on the next street every time you 3-bet or raised him. There were a ton of hands he could have here, and I really didn't think an ace made up much of his range, so luckily I got him to put most of the money in on his own (donkish) accord.
There are few things in life I hate more than shortstackers. These rat-holers ruin the game, and I hate them with a passion.
Could this guy have played his hand any worse? I guess check/calling every street constitutes a slow-play...
My first "misclick" -- damn keyboard added an extra digit cost me $700 :(
Slow-playing is contagious (but it's still a really bad idea)
Dunno if shoving here is correct, but he could totally have a worse jack right?
Tough fold here, but I think I'm drawing dead pretty often here against this villain. He was a total nit (~12/9 or so), and I'm definitely behind when he shoves. I was extremely close to checking this behind because: 1) my hand can't stand a raise from a player like this, and 2) I got a bad feeling about the way he checked on the turn.
Yes, I do 4-shove AA and KK. Some people only 4-shove their bluffs (Ace-X), AK, and sometimes QQ, but I think it's important to 4-shove with aces & kings too if you 4-shove at all.
Ugh, so sick. Seeing that T on the turn always makes you cringe.
I get coolered for a big pot against an aggressive player. Nothing I can do here; I was obv planning to take the pot away on lots of flops that I missed.
I don't like this guy's call w/QQ at all. I was quite sure of a few things in this hand before I called before the flop: 1) here2win had an overpair, but was reasonably solid; 2) rattlenbite was a donkey and could have just about anything; and 3) I could use these two pieces of information to my advantage to take lots of pots away post-flop. When ratt donk led, I was pretty sure I had good FE against him (and obviously plenty of equity against his calling range too), and I honestly expected to take the pot down on the flop without going to showdown. here2win's call on the flop is quite bad without a very specific read on me -- which I'm pretty sure he didn't have since I'd been playing pretty solid thus far. Against my range here, he's going to be about a coinflip at best most of the time and a huge underdog a lot of the time.
Donks like to bluff when you check to them. It's a well-documented impulse that they often cannot control.
This was a snap-call preflop. Too bad 99 couldn't hold up; villain here was super LAG-spewy, so 99 is the nuts here.
No idea wtf this guy was thinking
The plan here was to bet/3-bet allin against this super-LAG jokester, but that plan went to hell when s/he straight-up shoved. Too bad I didn't have an ace to snap-call with :(
Flop the nuts, lose a big pot. I really wanted to fold the river here, and I might have if Doomer and Derric weren't screaming at me to call on vent :(
Bluffing nits is not a good idea. Had to try it once though.
Smooth called the flop here to give an aggro player behind me the chance to make a big mistake. I wasn't worried about either draw out there to hit the donkish villain in this hand, but he proved me wrong.
Tough call for me here -- villain was pretty standard/TAG and I could definitely fold this against a lot of players, but my gut said to call here and I did.
Lots of players value-bet the river here, but I prefer check/calling for exactly this reason.
Run good one time! Open-ended straight flush draws are always fun, and I got lucky to win our little coinflip this time.
I raise floaters, and they're everywhere nowdays :(
River bet FTW! Villain in this hand was pretty donkish, and I was almost certain he had a draw that missed. I think betting the river in spots like these when a bad player checks to you is absolutely imperative with any two cards, especially when you don't have showdown value. If I had the A-high flush draw I think my hand might have been best anyway (but I still would have made the bet). Derric didn't like this bet at the time, but he agreed with me once I explained my reasoning (and after the guy folded obv!).
The rest of these hands happened during a 4-hour session I had against a very deepstacked donk who could be pretty aggressive:
I found myself a big donk sitting extremely deep on PS. He hated folding -- I'm 100% sure that he still would have called me even if the river didn't pair the king.
He's an aggressive donkey -- I love how when you flop the nut straight sitting deep against an aggro donkey the turn and river are always the two worst cards in the deck for your hand. Thank God he didn't have anything. (Note the similarity to this hand posted above; guess I just run bad when flopping straights)
He really likes to bluff -- am I playing this too passively?
This guy doesn't fold, so idk why I even tried to bluff him
Note to self: DO NOT BLUFF THIS GUY! He loved doing stuff like this.
Pretty sure my pair outs were good here too
You knew it was coming -- thankfully I won the massive pot that you knew was inevitable. The table broke shortly thereafter for obvious reasons, but I truly enjoyed the 4hrs I spent at the table playing against this guy.
Whew, that was a lot of hands. I played nearly 3500 hands today, which is very high for me in a single day, netting me about $4500 on the day. Needless to say, my second session today was much better than the first. I plan to start doing daily (or at least semi-weekly) posts like these as part of my session reviews, so keep checking back for more hot poker action. In the meantime, I've got a Margherita pizza calling my name from the fridge...
Poker-wise, I'm having a good month so far. I've been running about average of late, and I'm trying to put in a bunch of hands early in the month since I'll be traveling during the latter half of December. Since leaving Accenture, I've been trying to play about 2hrs every day, even if it's at lower stakes than 5/10. The games are so much easier at 3/6 and 2/4 that I've preferred playing a bunch of tables at those stakes as of late instead of grinding it out with a table full of regulars at 5/10 all day. I still feel like I have an edge on most of the regulars at 5/10, but I just don't enjoy it as much unless the games are good. I'm pretty sure I have one of the highest winrates at 5/10 over the past few months (just over 7.1ptbb/100 in my last ~40k hands), however I think it's more important for me to play games that I enjoy instead of simply playing the highest stakes I can consistently beat.
A few interesting hands I haven't blogged about yet:
Ace high is the nuts -- whitelime is a very good, aggressive player and I wasn't about to fold this monster to him. This was from the CR / "Bad Beat on Cancer" Foundation freeroll SNG that I won in November. I donated the $200 I won from this SNG to charity. :)
I got owned pretty hard here, even though this guy's play is atrocious. I was pretty sure this guy was a donkey, but WTF?!
Just because I check behind doesn't mean I don't have a hand -- this guy cursed me in the chat, then proceeded to tilt off his stack by cold 4-shoving JTo from the button for ~50bb the very next hand. :(
I sucked out pretty bad here. It felt nice to finally dish out a horrendous beat. :)
I did a sweat session with Derric last night while he 12-tabled 2/4NL full ring, and holy crap he's such a nit. Maybe you just have to be to play full ring, but I was constantly surprised at how tight he was playing. So he returned the favor this afternoon by watching me play 3/6 & 5/10 on FTP for about two hours. Unfortunately I ran like absolute dogshit the entire time and was down about $4k at one point, finishing down about $1600 overall. I really enjoy having other good players sweat me and discuss hands while I'm playing; this process is how I learn best.
My plans for the night fell through, so after a few hours' break I headed back to the tables. Here are the interesting/big hands:
Derric didn't like this shove, but I was pretty sure my opponent didn't have anything.
Sigh, I still run bad against donks. Luckily things turned around later in the sesh :)
Kids at home: this is why you don't slowplay. This guy was a pretty big donkey though, and he snap-called my river shove. This hand was important to in allowing me to take a good amount of his stack later on (see next hand).
My turn shove really was for value, I swear. It's obviously pretty thin, but this guy was a huge donk (although he was quite aggressive) who led very big OOP (often for full pot) on the next street every time you 3-bet or raised him. There were a ton of hands he could have here, and I really didn't think an ace made up much of his range, so luckily I got him to put most of the money in on his own (donkish) accord.
There are few things in life I hate more than shortstackers. These rat-holers ruin the game, and I hate them with a passion.
Could this guy have played his hand any worse? I guess check/calling every street constitutes a slow-play...
My first "misclick" -- damn keyboard added an extra digit cost me $700 :(
Slow-playing is contagious (but it's still a really bad idea)
Dunno if shoving here is correct, but he could totally have a worse jack right?
Tough fold here, but I think I'm drawing dead pretty often here against this villain. He was a total nit (~12/9 or so), and I'm definitely behind when he shoves. I was extremely close to checking this behind because: 1) my hand can't stand a raise from a player like this, and 2) I got a bad feeling about the way he checked on the turn.
Yes, I do 4-shove AA and KK. Some people only 4-shove their bluffs (Ace-X), AK, and sometimes QQ, but I think it's important to 4-shove with aces & kings too if you 4-shove at all.
Ugh, so sick. Seeing that T on the turn always makes you cringe.
I get coolered for a big pot against an aggressive player. Nothing I can do here; I was obv planning to take the pot away on lots of flops that I missed.
I don't like this guy's call w/QQ at all. I was quite sure of a few things in this hand before I called before the flop: 1) here2win had an overpair, but was reasonably solid; 2) rattlenbite was a donkey and could have just about anything; and 3) I could use these two pieces of information to my advantage to take lots of pots away post-flop. When ratt donk led, I was pretty sure I had good FE against him (and obviously plenty of equity against his calling range too), and I honestly expected to take the pot down on the flop without going to showdown. here2win's call on the flop is quite bad without a very specific read on me -- which I'm pretty sure he didn't have since I'd been playing pretty solid thus far. Against my range here, he's going to be about a coinflip at best most of the time and a huge underdog a lot of the time.
Donks like to bluff when you check to them. It's a well-documented impulse that they often cannot control.
This was a snap-call preflop. Too bad 99 couldn't hold up; villain here was super LAG-spewy, so 99 is the nuts here.
No idea wtf this guy was thinking
The plan here was to bet/3-bet allin against this super-LAG jokester, but that plan went to hell when s/he straight-up shoved. Too bad I didn't have an ace to snap-call with :(
Flop the nuts, lose a big pot. I really wanted to fold the river here, and I might have if Doomer and Derric weren't screaming at me to call on vent :(
Bluffing nits is not a good idea. Had to try it once though.
Smooth called the flop here to give an aggro player behind me the chance to make a big mistake. I wasn't worried about either draw out there to hit the donkish villain in this hand, but he proved me wrong.
Tough call for me here -- villain was pretty standard/TAG and I could definitely fold this against a lot of players, but my gut said to call here and I did.
Lots of players value-bet the river here, but I prefer check/calling for exactly this reason.
Run good one time! Open-ended straight flush draws are always fun, and I got lucky to win our little coinflip this time.
I raise floaters, and they're everywhere nowdays :(
River bet FTW! Villain in this hand was pretty donkish, and I was almost certain he had a draw that missed. I think betting the river in spots like these when a bad player checks to you is absolutely imperative with any two cards, especially when you don't have showdown value. If I had the A-high flush draw I think my hand might have been best anyway (but I still would have made the bet). Derric didn't like this bet at the time, but he agreed with me once I explained my reasoning (and after the guy folded obv!).
The rest of these hands happened during a 4-hour session I had against a very deepstacked donk who could be pretty aggressive:
I found myself a big donk sitting extremely deep on PS. He hated folding -- I'm 100% sure that he still would have called me even if the river didn't pair the king.
He's an aggressive donkey -- I love how when you flop the nut straight sitting deep against an aggro donkey the turn and river are always the two worst cards in the deck for your hand. Thank God he didn't have anything. (Note the similarity to this hand posted above; guess I just run bad when flopping straights)
He really likes to bluff -- am I playing this too passively?
This guy doesn't fold, so idk why I even tried to bluff him
Note to self: DO NOT BLUFF THIS GUY! He loved doing stuff like this.
Pretty sure my pair outs were good here too
You knew it was coming -- thankfully I won the massive pot that you knew was inevitable. The table broke shortly thereafter for obvious reasons, but I truly enjoyed the 4hrs I spent at the table playing against this guy.
Whew, that was a lot of hands. I played nearly 3500 hands today, which is very high for me in a single day, netting me about $4500 on the day. Needless to say, my second session today was much better than the first. I plan to start doing daily (or at least semi-weekly) posts like these as part of my session reviews, so keep checking back for more hot poker action. In the meantime, I've got a Margherita pizza calling my name from the fridge...
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Post-Aruba Life
Well it's been forever since I updated this blog, and a *lot* has changed in my life since Aruba. My trip to the island was amazing -- we stayed in this really awesome house about 5min from the casinos. It was very very hot the whole time we were there; unfortunately the A/C in the house wasn't quite up to the task of keeping our living areas cool. Luckily each room also had an A/C unit, and the one in my room kept me nice and cool at night.
Apparently when you have a big pool, a separate hot tub connected to said pool via waterfall, and a huge patio area, Aruban law requires you to host at least one party per week. It's a strange law for sure, but seeing as how we didn't want to cause any trouble we threw a big bash my last night on the island. Some crazy stuff happened during both the party and in the casino during my 5 days there, but I know all of you read this blog for the poker stuff so I'll spare you all of the boring (awesome) details. My roommates Derric, Clay, TC, and Doomer were awesome -- we've gotta do that again sometime guys.
At the poker tables, I dropped about $2500 at 5/10 pretty quickly getting 2-outed and then 5-outed in almost consecutive hands during my second orbit. The games were very soft, as usual, but unfortunatly I didn't get to play much during my stay on the island. I made most of my losses back in a very good 10/20 game, but that was short-lived as well. All in all, I ended the trip about even at poker. Some poker room highlights I remember:
- Andrew getting thrown out of the poker room
- Andrew sneaking back in, hanging out for a second, then getting thrown out again by 4 huge security guards
- Top boat losing to rivered quads for ~$8k at 5/10 after getting allin on the turn
- Making a value check/raise on Annette_15 with king high, no draw on the turn of some hand one night
- Taylor being took drunk to read his hand at PLO, yet still insisting on playing at our table (me, a few other CR guys, Annette, and a random live donk)
- Some chick at the above table leaves to go to the bathroom, and I look over a second later to see Andrew sitting in her seat next to Taylor playing the girl's hand for her with her chips. She came back a minute or two later and had him escorted out again. (Note to Wiggins: 6'4" guys in bright yellow shirts stand out very boldly in just about any crowd)
While in Aruba, I talked to a bunch of my poker buddies who had gone pro about their experiences being self-employed. Just about everyone I talked to about my situation agreed with me that it simply didn't make sense to continue working at Accenture, so I left the company shortly after returning from my vacation. It's crazy and kind of scary, but I'm totally up for the challenge.
The one factor I forgot to consider was that life is a bitch, and as such, as soon as I left my job I went on the biggest downswing of my life. To be blunt, I dropped $17k in my first four days as a professional, nearly all of it from running really bad at 3/6 and 5/10. I'd get my money in as a favorite and lose every time. It just kept happening over and over and over again, and it really wore me down. Here's two perfect examples of how my October went:
This was at the final table of a $50 tournament -- losing this hand cost me at least $2k and possibly as much as $8k
OMG HOW DO I RUN THIS BAD?! -- dean06 said in the chat that he folded KK preflop after 3-betting my UTG raise, and based on how nitty he was playing I believe him.
So I did what I always do when I run bad: I bought some cool stuff for myself. I got some new games for the 360 and bought an entire winter wardrobe (a good move on my part). I was very concerned about having a losing month (which hadn't happened to me in over 18 months), and somehow I rallied back by the end of the month to finish up a hair over $2k. This was a huge victory for my self-confidence, and I was pumped to take on November.
As soon as October ended, I went back to running normal. This meant that I'd usually win when I got my money in as a huge favorite -- awesome! I'm sure there was some interesting stuff in November, but aside from meeting a really awesome girl at my sister's deb party back home and my birthday at the end of the month, it was pretty standard on the whole. That's not to say I didn't lose some retarded hands, but it was nothing compared to what I went through in October. I made about $15k at NLH in November, so I netted about $10k after my PLO losses (see below).
I tried learning PLO in November, even going so far as to hire one of my Vegas roommates to coach me through beating the 2/4PLO games, but I ran into some absolutely SICK variance (yeah, I know) and gave up after dropping ~$5500 in my first 3 or 4 days. Some of this was from tilt or dumb plays on my part, but the majority of it was from sick variance, coolers, and running bad. It made me really angry losing so much when the average skill level of my opponent was so incredibly low; people did absolutely retarded shit like defending their BB w/K863 rainbow against a button raise, then stacking off 50bb on a K-high flop with no other draws! PLO is a sick, sick game with massive variance; I'm sure I'll give it another shot later on down the road.
I started coaching again, and I've currently got three students, all of whom I think have the potential to become excellent players. I really enjoy teaching the game to others who are similarly motivated to learn, and in addition to the videos I make for CR, I feel like this is my way of giving back to the poker community. On a similar note, I'm working with a few of the CR guys on some really cool stuff that I can hopefully talk about more in January, but for now that's all I can really say. We should have two really huge announcements for CR coming pretty soon, this being one of them, so keep your ears open!
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm an avid Guitar Hero & Rock Band junkie, and I've come a long way at both games recently. In GH3, I'm two songs away from having 5 stars on every song on Hard -- only Knights of Cydonia (which is an awesome song) and the Slayer song (which is a really shitty song) remain. The Slayer song is also the only song I can't beat on Expert, mostly because it's a terrible song and I have no motivation to practice it. I've also managed to crack 200k points on Through the Fire and Flames a few times, an achievement of which I'm damn proud.
On the Rock Band side, I beat drums on Hard yesterday. On my way to doing this, I only failed two songs: (Don't Fear) The Reaper and Run to the Hills. I beat the Blue Oyster Cult song on my second try (the bridge part is awesome), but the Iron Maiden song took a *lot* of practice to beat. The Who's Don't Get Fooled Again is a pretty awesome song for every instrument and is definitely one of my favorites in the game. Expert will be pretty much impossible to beat on drums, but I'll give it a shot. I've already beaten guitar and vocals on Expert, so here's hoping for the trifecta.
Anyway, that pretty much does it for my long-overdue update. I had a pretty crazy day at poker today/tonight, but I'll put all of that in its own post shortly.
Apparently when you have a big pool, a separate hot tub connected to said pool via waterfall, and a huge patio area, Aruban law requires you to host at least one party per week. It's a strange law for sure, but seeing as how we didn't want to cause any trouble we threw a big bash my last night on the island. Some crazy stuff happened during both the party and in the casino during my 5 days there, but I know all of you read this blog for the poker stuff so I'll spare you all of the boring (awesome) details. My roommates Derric, Clay, TC, and Doomer were awesome -- we've gotta do that again sometime guys.
At the poker tables, I dropped about $2500 at 5/10 pretty quickly getting 2-outed and then 5-outed in almost consecutive hands during my second orbit. The games were very soft, as usual, but unfortunatly I didn't get to play much during my stay on the island. I made most of my losses back in a very good 10/20 game, but that was short-lived as well. All in all, I ended the trip about even at poker. Some poker room highlights I remember:
- Andrew getting thrown out of the poker room
- Andrew sneaking back in, hanging out for a second, then getting thrown out again by 4 huge security guards
- Top boat losing to rivered quads for ~$8k at 5/10 after getting allin on the turn
- Making a value check/raise on Annette_15 with king high, no draw on the turn of some hand one night
- Taylor being took drunk to read his hand at PLO, yet still insisting on playing at our table (me, a few other CR guys, Annette, and a random live donk)
- Some chick at the above table leaves to go to the bathroom, and I look over a second later to see Andrew sitting in her seat next to Taylor playing the girl's hand for her with her chips. She came back a minute or two later and had him escorted out again. (Note to Wiggins: 6'4" guys in bright yellow shirts stand out very boldly in just about any crowd)
While in Aruba, I talked to a bunch of my poker buddies who had gone pro about their experiences being self-employed. Just about everyone I talked to about my situation agreed with me that it simply didn't make sense to continue working at Accenture, so I left the company shortly after returning from my vacation. It's crazy and kind of scary, but I'm totally up for the challenge.
The one factor I forgot to consider was that life is a bitch, and as such, as soon as I left my job I went on the biggest downswing of my life. To be blunt, I dropped $17k in my first four days as a professional, nearly all of it from running really bad at 3/6 and 5/10. I'd get my money in as a favorite and lose every time. It just kept happening over and over and over again, and it really wore me down. Here's two perfect examples of how my October went:
This was at the final table of a $50 tournament -- losing this hand cost me at least $2k and possibly as much as $8k
OMG HOW DO I RUN THIS BAD?! -- dean06 said in the chat that he folded KK preflop after 3-betting my UTG raise, and based on how nitty he was playing I believe him.
So I did what I always do when I run bad: I bought some cool stuff for myself. I got some new games for the 360 and bought an entire winter wardrobe (a good move on my part). I was very concerned about having a losing month (which hadn't happened to me in over 18 months), and somehow I rallied back by the end of the month to finish up a hair over $2k. This was a huge victory for my self-confidence, and I was pumped to take on November.
As soon as October ended, I went back to running normal. This meant that I'd usually win when I got my money in as a huge favorite -- awesome! I'm sure there was some interesting stuff in November, but aside from meeting a really awesome girl at my sister's deb party back home and my birthday at the end of the month, it was pretty standard on the whole. That's not to say I didn't lose some retarded hands, but it was nothing compared to what I went through in October. I made about $15k at NLH in November, so I netted about $10k after my PLO losses (see below).
I tried learning PLO in November, even going so far as to hire one of my Vegas roommates to coach me through beating the 2/4PLO games, but I ran into some absolutely SICK variance (yeah, I know) and gave up after dropping ~$5500 in my first 3 or 4 days. Some of this was from tilt or dumb plays on my part, but the majority of it was from sick variance, coolers, and running bad. It made me really angry losing so much when the average skill level of my opponent was so incredibly low; people did absolutely retarded shit like defending their BB w/K863 rainbow against a button raise, then stacking off 50bb on a K-high flop with no other draws! PLO is a sick, sick game with massive variance; I'm sure I'll give it another shot later on down the road.
I started coaching again, and I've currently got three students, all of whom I think have the potential to become excellent players. I really enjoy teaching the game to others who are similarly motivated to learn, and in addition to the videos I make for CR, I feel like this is my way of giving back to the poker community. On a similar note, I'm working with a few of the CR guys on some really cool stuff that I can hopefully talk about more in January, but for now that's all I can really say. We should have two really huge announcements for CR coming pretty soon, this being one of them, so keep your ears open!
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm an avid Guitar Hero & Rock Band junkie, and I've come a long way at both games recently. In GH3, I'm two songs away from having 5 stars on every song on Hard -- only Knights of Cydonia (which is an awesome song) and the Slayer song (which is a really shitty song) remain. The Slayer song is also the only song I can't beat on Expert, mostly because it's a terrible song and I have no motivation to practice it. I've also managed to crack 200k points on Through the Fire and Flames a few times, an achievement of which I'm damn proud.
On the Rock Band side, I beat drums on Hard yesterday. On my way to doing this, I only failed two songs: (Don't Fear) The Reaper and Run to the Hills. I beat the Blue Oyster Cult song on my second try (the bridge part is awesome), but the Iron Maiden song took a *lot* of practice to beat. The Who's Don't Get Fooled Again is a pretty awesome song for every instrument and is definitely one of my favorites in the game. Expert will be pretty much impossible to beat on drums, but I'll give it a shot. I've already beaten guitar and vocals on Expert, so here's hoping for the trifecta.
Anyway, that pretty much does it for my long-overdue update. I had a pretty crazy day at poker today/tonight, but I'll put all of that in its own post shortly.
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