PLO Pimpin'

What’s up Degens?

As always, here’s a few songs that I think everyone should check out if they’re a fan of rap/hip hop (both old school and new stuff)

Raekwon – Incarcerated Scarfaces (sickest Rza beat ever)
Raekwon ft. Nas – Verbal Intercourse
Notorious BIG – Kick In the Door (ridic lyrics imo. if you don’t like this song, you don’t like BIG or east coast rap in general)
Notorious BIG ft. Funkmaster Flex – Wickedest
GZA – Liquid Swords (Another sick RZA beat, and his lyrics are unreal)

So IRL stuff has been pretty ridiculous this past week, both good and bad, but I’ll start off with the bad. Last week I got pulled over because my plates were expired (guess I spaced renewing them), and to make matters worse I didn’t have an updated insurance card in my wallet, so I got double ticketed and have to appear in court in January to prove that I actually had insurance at the time I was pulled over. This isn’t really a big deal, just more annoying than anything.

Next, I got hammered pretty well at the tables all weekend. Did fine at NLHE, but got crushed playing live PLO again, of course. Luckily I didn’t break my promise of never playing FR Live PLO again, and they were sitting shorthanded, but I honestly am having trouble winning a pot in that game. Oh well, I love a challenge! Running good would help, I think.

Lastly, the technical issues in regards to the internet and my laptop have been really frustrating this past week. Beyond the obvious needles of not being able to get online without stealing someone else’s super slow internet, which as a result means my lessons are choppy and spotty play at the tables, not having internet just makes you an irritable person overall. I think most people who are involved in either gaming, gambling, or business ventures online will agree that if you don’t have a solid internet connection, it can put you in a sour mood faster than you ever thought possible. I’m quite certain that both my roommate and I are fully addicted to the internet. Does anyone know if they’ve defined a medical term for this?

The dumb thing is even if I wanted to get on the internet, I couldn’t because my computer got a really bad virus, causing it to slowwwwww. Let’s backtrack a couple of years. When I first bought a Sony Vaio, I got the accidental warranty coverage at Best Buy in case I dropped it or something happened to it (I get the feeling this is going to turn into a Best Buy rant). They fuck you pretty good because not only do they get you to sign up for the warranty, but they loop you into the geek squad coverage so you can supposedly bring it in when the computer is messing up so they can fix it for ‘free’, instead of paying a bunch when you actually have to bring it in (which inevitably seems to happen). Well, when the first computer got messed up, I brought it in, but obviously they wanted to charge me a bunch of money to diagnose and fix the problems it had, and also to make me wait like 3-4 weeks for them to process everything.

So instead of waiting, I decided to let my roommate at the time take a T-Ball bat to it instead. I dropped it off the second floor into his strike zone on the floor below, and we made a pretty good time out of hacking everything to hell. I happily took my computer into BB, where they handed me a brand new Sony Vaio, and all was well. I of course bought the accidental coverage again, and figured I’d just keep repeating this process until I somehow couldn’t get a brand new computer every year or two for just a few hundred bucks in warranty coverage.

Well, that someday was today, except for this time I just threw the laptop into the ground repeatedly until it was shattered into like 50 pieces. I took it into BB, and to my dismay, they apparently have a stipulation in the contract now that says if the computer is in more than 2 pieces, the accidental coverage won’t cover the damages. Because I’ve been fed up with my last three computers that were PC’s, I decided to give a Mac a shot. I settled on the MacBook Pro, and so far it seems pretty awesome. My only complaint right now is that I can’t get HEM, Camtasia, or Pamela on it. But I’ve been talking to a few of the DC guys and there’s obviously ways around it. If anyone out there can give me some tips on how to make the process go smoother, I’d greatly appreciate it!

Otherwise everything has been great. My coach Tom was in town with a friend this weekend, so it was cool to meet him IRL and shoot the shit for a bit. He’s a really big sports fan too, so we had fun drinking beer and sweating the games in the sportsbook. It’s always fun to meet cardplayers in person, particularly guys like him who are pretty in touch with the poker world and who share the same views as I do on a variety of topics like business, life etc.

I wish I had more to report about poker, but honestly I haven’t been able to play because of all my technical issues. I haven’t played since my bad day (which I blogged about last time), but plan on getting back in there once I can get my data restored on my computer. I’ve been doing lessons from my roommates computer, and they’ve been going really well. I just picked up a bunch of new students this week, and I’m really excited to start with them because they seem very enthusiastic about improving their games. I always get pumped up when I get new students because I’ve learned something cool from everyone I’ve coached, so it’s fun getting into discussion with other poker minds.

For anyone that’s interested, I highly recommend checking out Mozy for all your backup stuff, it really is the nuts. It’s like $5/mo or something, and it automatically backs up all your shit without you even knowing about it. Scope it out.

I’m heading back to Denver for the holidays on Friday, and will be there through NYE, so if anyone’s out there and wants to meet up shoot me a PM!

Anyway, of course this turned out longer than I intended, but so it goes. Next time I’d like to include some strategy content like I’ve done before, so if anyone is interested in having me write about something specific let me know.

I hope everyone is running well!

GL,

John