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.