MasterAsylum Project

Okay so I pretty much am just giving up on the structure. I sold myself on how cool it’d be to do some sort of structured blog with some different topics throughout the week. I really don’t have the reader base for this to matter, so screw that it’s out.

As for news I’m definitely going to keep up myself but if you want to, learn to use RSS feeds. OMG they are incredible, and its not like you can’t just ask my opinion on something in the news if you really care to hear it.

Finally ran good today, made nearly a BI back finally. Got 1/2 the hands in I wanted to for the day, failed w/ 0 Sunday, and nearly 3/4 Monday. So not a great start, but I’m getting a little more motivated. We’ll see how it turns out long term really.

The new Scrubs: Med School has turned around from the first couple episodes and I’m starting to get into it. I just don’t think I’ll ever fall out of love w/ the relationship between Dorian and Cox.

Also FINALLY won the battle to stream BluRay on my HDTV through my PS3. This has been nothing short of a near war going on these last few weeks, finally happy to have some success. Roommate doesn’t seem to care, but then again he didn’t care about the PC before I helped him upgrade it and HDTV until I got him switched over. Weeee.

Today I did a lot of thinking about getting back into the technology world and possibly going back to school for real if the government would be willing to pay for it, but I doubt it’ll happen unless poker fails this year. I really wanna make my push to make this into something good. I’m REALLY not that far away from a decent living for me and not that much further from a good living. I don’t need millions to be happy, $50k-$100k/yr really would be more than enough for me.

Yeah so that’s all I have for today, welcome to the new format, a true spewtacular blog. Be wary, be very wary.

I’m going to break the intended Sunday format here tonight as recent news really isn’t that important to me currently. I may even just drop that segment because, to be honest, I don’t give a shit what’s going on in the poker world that much. It feels like more of a hassle when I come to write this blog, so I guess this is me saying “Recent News” is out by my decree. That being said, I found another cumtacular day of hell at the tables. Got in 865 hands, so 2/3 of what I needed to do to make up for Sunday. I got my Top2 crushed by AK that rivered the A for better top 2, really fun. I also found set<set two times today and I’m pretty overall fucking sick of this run bad. But I am not here to bitch, it sucks, but it happens. After it finally mentally snapped me and results in a table being hammered to shit, literally hammered, and a 12 hour self ban… I am calmed down and focused. I read over a couple of links(#1 and #2=) Alex gave me about running bad and all of that. All in all I’m mentally focused more than ever and am going to push. If I hemorrhage(TY spell check as I didn’t even have a damned clue how to spell this one.) really bad then I am going to drop down to NL$10 and grind there again. Not even remotely happy about it, but I can’t afford to keep getting ass raped at NL$25, have to protect my nitty BR requirements. So here are my new focus goals this week:

#1: 1200 hands a day, this is roughly about 4 hours 4 tabling, should be very doable. This is an average as some days I may not get as many and some I will.

#2: BLOG DAMMIT YOU LAZY BASTARD CHRIS, BLOG LIKE YOU’VE NEVER BLOGGED BEFORE, oh wait…

#3: No more fast food.

#4: No more soda, lol g/l to me on that. If I weren’t temporarily broke I’d have a better chance.

#5: WORKOUT OR CANCEL THE FUCKING MEMBERSHIP. Had $40/mo YMCA membership since like June and I’ve been ONE time. Such a waste.

I’ll edit later and add on the link to the forum post for today’s hand reviews, I’m not gonna bother with one “interesting” one because I really just don’t give a fuck about it right now. I’m wanting to pump through tonight’s/yesterday’s blog and get focused on my review before bed.

If you didn’t notice I am a bit cranky, but after the games today/last week and the fact I feel I am really slacking has just pissed me of at myself so bad. I even played a couple terrible spots that I am fucking really pissed about. I rarely let tilt bleed into horrible stupid decisions, today I failed to prevent that a couple times. Luckily I was smart enough to start drinking and self ban to cool off. More to come tomorrow, maybe.

Okay so I missed Saturday’s review post, ran bad this week. Covered. I’ve been busy getting business stuff ready for family since dad has a surgery tomorrow and will be effectively useless for a few days leaving me in the “big seat” I guess. Tomorrow I’m off and I’ll do a better post. I’ve made some revisions to goals since they all failed. Kind of annoyed at myself as the blog fail is just pure laziness but w/e. The snow shoveling Thurs/Friday killed my energy this weekend. I’ll be back tomorrow w/ a decent post to make up for today.

Poker News: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/pokerstars-announces-north-american-poker-tour-7367/

SO! PokerStars is going to get a North American Poker Tour going, like APPT/WPT/PCA type stuff. This sounds freaking awesome, I’m really hoping there is some chance there may be one kind of local to Ohio so I can possibly work on getting into one and trying my shot! Kind of excited at the idea, more to come later on that I guess.

Okay so I know this is late, I really did have all this done earlier but the National Championship came on and I didn’t wanna wait. I did a live video, where I finally didn’t run horrible; YAY!!!! There’s no audio, had issues with it and my background music. It was overpowering. So I’ll balance it more next time. I also did apply 150% speed, so it IS going to fly through. I am going to test a different render system tonight to see if I can make it a little bit bigger. My original AVI was like just shy of 1GB, and well… Yeah. So here it is to download, I’ll work on a better one for next week. I kind of forgot about it until today so I had to work on a time constraint. The link to it is below, also linking to forum thread for the detailed posts!

Video: http://www.sendspace.com/file/22g078
Forum: http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/22-Member-Videos/67551-First-Video

Interesting Hand:
So this hand was kind of interesting, rarely do I find myself 5b shoving AQo, this time I did and was actually happy to be doing so versus this villain.

This is a three handed situation, the hand or just shortly before this I had 3b this villain and he had seen me 4b the villain who seemed to be 3b’ing me with prejudice. So, I entirely believe this villain is aggressive, paying attention, thinking, and is adjusting. That being said, I do feel he is capable of 4b bluffing me and is why I do go ahead and make the 5b shove. That being said, it took about 1.3 seconds for him to call with his hand. The stats on this villain were 25/23 w/ a 43% Total Agg Frequency, but when we was aggressive preflop he was massively aggressive holding like a 14 Factor. Ultimately I may have really just been lucky as AQo plays horribly in a 4b+ pot, but something just felt like an adjustment more than premiums to me and I went with it. I do not recommend this play like hardly ever, and would rarely do this myself; it is not a common play in my book! Also sorry, but it seems DC isn’t working, AGAIN. So ugly hand conversion coming!

PokerStars Game #37800532672: Hold’em No Limit ($0.10/$0.25 USD) – 2010/01/07 15:35:06 ET
Table ‘Kresak II’ 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: no dishman ($4.65 in chips)
Seat 2: Optiimus ($25 in chips)
Seat 5: MasterAsylum ($33.40 in chips)
Seat 6: fertaxe9 ($26.40 in chips)
MasterAsylum: posts small blind $0.10
fertaxe9: posts big blind $0.25

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [Ad Qh]
  no dishman: folds
  Optiimus: raises $0.75 to $1
  no dishman is sitting out
  MasterAsylum: raises $2.50 to $3.50
  fertaxe9: folds
  Optiimus: raises $5.75 to $9.25
  MasterAsylum: raises $24.15 to $33.40 and is all-in
  Optiimus: calls $15.75 and is all-in
  Uncalled bet ($8.40) returned to MasterAsylum
• FLOP * [Qc Qd Th]
• TURN * [Qc Qd Th] [Kc]
• RIVER * [Qc Qd Th Kc] [Tc]
• SHOW DOWN *
  MasterAsylum: shows [Ad Qh] (a full house, Queens full of Tens)
  Optiimus: shows [Jh Qs] (a full house, Queens full of Tens)
  MasterAsylum collected $24.15 from pot
  Optiimus collected $24.10 from pot

Recent News: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/isildur1-may-file-online-poker-data-mining-complaint-7169/

So, this brings up a rather interesting piece of information about the events that happened. I find it interesting that he felt Tom Dwan was his easiest opponent and am in no way surprised to hear Phil Ivey was his hardest, the dude can freaking time travel! All in all this is kind of gross that it took a team of 3 high level players to beat the guy w/ great deal of study. The article is an interesting read and I do hope to hear more about what comes from this all. Also, 100% RB, must be nice; maybe why they are so hateful w/ the RB policy? (Yes, I’m sour.)

Really don’t have a lot to bring to you guys today. I guess I can give a little information on the wonderful trip through irritation my dad put me through last week…

Head to my parents to work last Tuesday around 5PM, they headed off to the University of Dayton basketball game. I just chilled and watched a little bit of TV and rested, when they got home my dad went into a super angry rant. Basically took a nice crap all over my desire to play poker and that it was just luck and a lottery, you know the usual hater speech. I learned years ago that trying to fight back with reasoning is an epic fail here so I just let him bitch. Ultimately he turned it into “Ya know what, take a monh off and see how you do with living on your poker money.” So essentially he was laying me off. Awesome little move before the year ends, right after we booked a huge month in December sales and I busted my ass all month long and flexed my schedule to help his business. Really cool, good way to crush me I guess. Two weeks of finally being HAPPY in my life, he got me good. Oh did I mention the basica “You’re a failure and never going to be anything more than a bum” the rest of your life? That was cool too. So the next day I get a text from my mom saying that if I want my job I have to come talk to my dad. So drag myself out there in the afternoon to talk. The basis of his issues that caused him to basically blow up and go postal on his son was that when I came out to work, I go to work not visit with them before hand or whatever and that I texted my mom when I was sick/not feeling well (Mind you, I’ve done this twice in the past 6 months; I usually call him.). Those two things were the reason my dad totally trashed on my life, my ambition, and any form of happiness I had. My dad, who I love, really has a fucked up way of thinking about life. But alas, it really didn’t help his cause as now I have that job back AND now I have motivation to really push my poker grind. I want to prove him wrong, quit, and never look back at Ohio. Fucking hate Ohio, fucking can’t stand most of the people (Though that may just be stupid people anywhere), and I’m ready to move on.

So yeah, I’m probably being a bitch… But it was pretty ridiculous. I am not sure if that is having any effect on my poker game right now or not, and I mean the totally douchebaggery making me tilty emotionally, not the grind itself. I just am not sure… I have Thursday and Saturday off and starting next week I’m gonna press a schedule with my dad and that’s just how it is going to go, period. So yeah today’s post is a bit shorter, maybe more to come later. No interesting hand either as I have 0 desire to look into the runbad hell of the previous two days, it was just ugly. Lets just say I fucking hate overpairs getting soul crushed by sets, starting to piss me off.

Oh on a side note, my buddy Alex is getting some great respect from his results on PTPoker and I am really happy to see he’s finally getting a chance to take some shots and go somewhere. The man has really put in a lot of hard work to get good at his game and now hopefully it’ll pay off. Now if we only both can remove our bad run this week. Sigh May be a smallest loser wins week as we’re both dangerously close to -100% to goal.

Weekly Video Series: The Mathematics of NLHE by WiltonTilt

Recent News: Okay I haven’t really been on the ball with keeping up on this, but it seems I have generated my own little piece of news. Today I will be taking my 3rd shot at the Sunday Million on Stars, qualified last night in a double shootout where I really felt I had a damn good edge on the majority of the villains I faced. I almost got screwed on it due to a horrific call station moron to my left. He accumulated like an 11k stack at 100/200 with me at 2k and other villain at 1k or less, and for some reason wasn’t open shoving like 100% or something. It was bad. The other villain was roller coastering a ton and just trying to HAND me the ticket while this foolish son of a beach refused to take care of it. Finally the last hand was idiot call station w/ AK v idiot folds too much w/ K6ss and it came about as safe as you can ask. So today, hopefully, I’ll be running a nice new year start to the life! I promise to be a little bit less self centered on this on Tuesday’s blog.

So Sunday is about setting goals for myself and updating how I am going about achieving these goals. Also if I decided to abandon them at all, like if I feel they are pulling from my ability. So onto the goals!

First goal this week will be to make sure I am pushing the 6 hours a day of cash game grinding. I know this sounds light to you super grinders, but this is a high bar for even me. Ontop of that I do have a part time job that eats 20 hours a week, so this puts me at roughly a 62 hour work week. The plan is going to be grinding 5 days Stars at NL25 and 2 days on Tilt at NL10. Tilt will only last until I can setup/clear my First Deposit bonus there. (I’ve never deposited because I really dislike the site and how horribly they run business regarding rakeback. Only depositting when I get $600 available to obviously take advantage of the bonus, then I’ll probably move off site or keep a small amount for donkaments there.) So until I get the bonus setup on Stars first and then setup for Tilt probably near February I will be focusing on Stars and NL25 mainly.

The second goal will be to keep up on updating this blog. Part of this is to help refine my communication a bit, another part of it is to just get crap out of my head, and the last is to let everyone in on how this entire experience goes as I attempt to turn poker into a living. Apart of this goal is also to make sure I fulfill my ideas of how to approach this blog fully, not half assing some here and there without some sort of very important reason.

I am sure I will assign more goals that are already somewhat in place, but I wanna build this list slowly, no reason to just switch every gear in the first day and burn out before week one even ends. Others will be concerning my health/working out, others will be special training sessions, and many other kinds of goodies to come! Also props to anyone that can name the animated series that the subject line was today, and most likely will be referenced frequently in the subject line!

Okay so there’s a couple specific hands to highlight, and they aren’t really focused around me or how I played but a read I had on the guy who folds too much mentioned earlier and some plays you should NOT be making. I can’t explain the exact reasoning why these plays are terrible as I am not a huge ICM freak and all that, I just know they are severe mistakes because of the bubble factor involved has to be pretty much huge. Answers to questions are going to be at the very bottom.

The first hand is going to be where I exploited this -EV tendancy of the villain and exploited it w/ a hand that I pretty much hate to play but felt it was good enough. This villain has essentially raised 100% BvB situations realizing I knew how to fold.

PokerStars Game #37569086312: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:49:10 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2050 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (10114 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (2836 in chips)
KnighofNii: posts small blind 100
MasterAsylum: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [2c 2d]
  Bumpers251: folds
  KnighofNii: raises 400 to 600
  MasterAsylum: raises 1450 to 2050 and is all-in

Q1: Now if you’re in the villain’s spot here, what do you feel you should do?

For this hand the setup is a little like this… Bumpers has been pretty weak and passive for the most part, he’s not even using more than minraises on a pretty consistent basis (This can be okay if stacks are a bit deeper and you’re using it to steal more often and are succeeding doing so, but usually you’re making a mistake here. That is especially true when the stacks are so shallow.) Also to follow it, his flop bets were pretty meager, minbetting a ton almost all the time. I was not able to formulate a read on this meaning weakness or strength, I assume weakness.

PokerStars Game #37569150848: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:51:53 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2550 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (10814 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (1636 in chips)
Bumpers251: posts small blind 100
KnighofNii: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [2s 8s]
  MasterAsylum: folds
  Bumpers251: raises 200 to 400
  KnighofNii: calls 200
• FLOP * [Ah Jd 3d]
  Bumpers251: checks
  KnighofNii: bets 400
  Bumpers251: calls 400
• TURN * [Ah Jd 3d] [Kd]
  Bumpers251: checks
  KnighofNii: checks
• RIVER * [Ah Jd 3d Kd] [6h]
  Bumpers251: bets 200
  KnighofNii: calls 200

Q2: When did who misplay and how poorly? Hint, hand is almost irrelevant at the point this comes up, not entirely but damn near close. (For you technical NITs, we’re looking at likely hand strength vs not exact hand or really a specific range.)

After that hand, this comes up… I really hate bumpers, I swear to god this is the worst player ever and he’s driving me insane, but w/e.

PokerStars Game #37569160383: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:52:17 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2550 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (11814 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (636 in chips)
KnighofNii: posts small blind 100
MasterAsylum: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [8d Tc]
  Bumpers251: folds
  KnighofNii: raises 436 to 636 and is all-in

Q3: Should we call here? Why/why not?

STOP SCROLLING HERE TO AVOID EXPOSING ANSWERS IF YOU REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!
STOP SCROLLING HERE TO AVOID EXPOSING ANSWERS IF YOU REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!
STOP SCROLLING HERE TO AVOID EXPOSING ANSWERS IF YOU REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!
STOP SCROLLING HERE TO AVOID EXPOSING ANSWERS IF YOU REALLY CARE THAT MUCH!

A1: If you feel confident enough to be raising +20% of your stack, you really should be thinking ahead for the price you need to call, especially since the villain’s stack is nearly irrelevant here as my stack is shorter and is the effective stack size. You’ve put in 30% of the effective stack and then I shove over. That makes the pot 2650 and you only need to call 1450 giving you just a bit under 2:1 odds. Now, a lot of people would naturally hop into the “Only need 33% to call” and that’s usually a pretty standard easy call for a lot of people. Lets look at it a bit more though! I can’t figure out bubble factors that well myself, I blame the transition to cash game stalling that lesson, but I am figuring it should be pretty sick high right now since 3rd is $35 and 1/2 is $215 value, so I’m going with a 1.7 bubble factor. That means you actually need 56% equity to call. He’s put me on a fairly narrow range to be shoving with since I’ve given up a considerable amount of blinds to his raising, this is where exploiting kind of came into play. 22 was probably not a hand he’s giving me credit for. I’m going to assign the two ranges I feel are most likely here.

Villain’s range:
22+,A2s+,K6s+,Q9s+,J8s+,T7s+,96s+,85s+,74s+,63s+,52s+,42s+,32s,A2o+,K9o+,QTo+,JTo,T9o,98o,87o,76o,65o,54o

Our range:
77+,A2s+,KTs+,QTs+,J9s+,T8s+,98s,87s,A2o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo,T9o,98o,87o

These are both fairly wide ranges and I may be off(Feel free to input here all you’d like, I’m certainly not perfect.) This villain’s equity given that range vs our range is a roughly 40-45% making him a dog and not receiving the equity needed to make this call properly. Folding is the right play assuming these ranges are pretty decently accurate. Villain folds, Hero’s resteal succeeds. And admittedly, even if I add in the PPs I am not actually exploitting as the same situation arises w/ roughly 45% equity for our villain. See, not always right; but it does make my play okay! WOOOO! Dumb luck! Full HH:

PokerStars Game #37569086312: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:49:10 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2050 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (10114 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (2836 in chips)
KnighofNii: posts small blind 100
MasterAsylum: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [2c 2d]
  Bumpers251: folds
  KnighofNii: raises 400 to 600
  MasterAsylum: raises 1450 to 2050 and is all-in
  KnighofNii: folds
  Uncalled bet (1450) returned to MasterAsylum
  MasterAsylum collected 1200 from pot
  MasterAsylum: doesn’t show hand
• SUMMARY *
  Total pot 1200 | Rake 0
  Seat 6: MasterAsylum (big blind) collected (1200)
  Seat 7: Bumpers251 (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
  Seat 10: KnighofNii (small blind) folded before Flop

A2: This is a whole plethora of ugly! The minraise is standard, so I can’t really hate on that from bumpers. The call is pretty much terrible. People, putting in 25% of your stack and having fold ANYWHERE in your plan is basically a terrible line. 25% of your stack in when you’re a whopping 8bb deep is freaking awful. Okay so flop comes down, the preflop raiser doesn’t cbet a very common continuation bet textured flop, so Knigh puts another 25% of his stack in, and gets called. We check the turn, then call the river bet. The flop makes it pretty clear we have a pair, and if this wasn’t the kind of flop we were hoping for then why the HELL are we calling off this much of our stack preflop? Why the HELL are we calling the river if we don’t bet the turn? This villain is repping a pair, and an ace rag hand is entirely likely, we are not representing anything better and then pay off. People, this is terrible. 10% of your stack goes in you better really be considering where you’re going, once you put 1/3 of your stack in you need a VERY, VERY big read to justify folding. After 50%, you’re making a horrific losing play by folding here. This is so bad I received a comment from Josh along the lines of, “Knigh is trying to hand you that ticket.” And he WAS! Full HH:

PokerStars Game #37569150848: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:51:53 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2550 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (10814 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (1636 in chips)
Bumpers251: posts small blind 100
KnighofNii: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [2s 8s]
  MasterAsylum: folds
  Bumpers251: raises 200 to 400
  KnighofNii: calls 200
• FLOP * [Ah Jd 3d]
  Bumpers251: checks
  KnighofNii: bets 400
  Bumpers251: calls 400
• TURN * [Ah Jd 3d] [Kd]
  Bumpers251: checks
  KnighofNii: checks
• RIVER * [Ah Jd 3d Kd] [6h]
  Bumpers251: bets 200
  KnighofNii: calls 200
• SHOW DOWN *
  Bumpers251: shows [5h As] (a pair of Aces)
  KnighofNii: mucks hand
  Bumpers251 collected 2000 from pot
• SUMMARY *
  Total pot 2000 | Rake 0
  Board [Ah Jd 3d Kd 6h]
  Seat 6: MasterAsylum (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
  Seat 7: Bumpers251 (small blind) showed [5h As] and won (2000) with a pair of Aces
  Seat 10: KnighofNii (big blind) mucked [Jh 9c]

A3: This spot is marginal according to Alex. I trust him, he’s pretty much an ICM freak/machine. With the fact I felt Bumpers was sucking so bad he was going to lose the ticket for me and Knigh was trying to give it I felt I needed to take the 2:1 shot here and take a shot to just end it there before Bumpers screwed me. Outside of that folding is probably just fine for the same reasons. Open for opinions. Full HH:

PokerStars Game #37569160383: Tournament #225869477, $10.70+$1.00 USD Hold’em No Limit – Match Round II, Level VI (100/200) – 2010/01/03 0:52:17 ET
Table ‘225869477 1’ 10-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 6: MasterAsylum (2550 in chips)
Seat 7: Bumpers251 (11814 in chips)
Seat 10: KnighofNii (636 in chips)
KnighofNii: posts small blind 100
MasterAsylum: posts big blind 200

• HOLE CARDS *
  Dealt to MasterAsylum [8d Tc]
  Bumpers251: folds
  KnighofNii: raises 436 to 636 and is all-in
  MasterAsylum: calls 436
• FLOP * [5s Ac 6s]
• TURN * [5s Ac 6s] [9c]
• RIVER * [5s Ac 6s 9c] [4s]
• SHOW DOWN *
  KnighofNii: shows [Jh Qc] (high card Ace)
  MasterAsylum: shows [8d Tc] (high card Ace – lower kicker)
  KnighofNii collected 1272 from pot
• SUMMARY *
  Total pot 1272 | Rake 0
  Board [5s Ac 6s 9c 4s]
  Seat 6: MasterAsylum (big blind) showed [8d Tc] and lost with high card Ace
  Seat 7: Bumpers251 (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
  Seat 10: KnighofNii (small blind) showed [Jh Qc] and won (1272) with high card Ace

Okay so I took a bit of time getting together and idea for how I wanna approach getting more effective w/ the blog, trying to build a reader base, and stuff that may be valuable for others or even myself down the road. I’ve decided that I will push myself to do a decent post on Sunday, Tuesday, Thurs, and Saturday every week. Each day is going to have a general guideline of theme. Each day I will try and bring up something going on in the poker world and bring you some relevant news outside of my own life and my own insight. Along w/ this the end of it all will include an interesting hand history I ran into since the previous blog entry and what my thought process was as I went through it. I think this will force me to really review my plays and work through my thought process in detail and give you an idea of how I think. For those who are better than me, they may spot leaks and assist me, and others may be able to learn something or receive a form of positive reinforcement. I will also include what material is next in my cue to study. If I find something I really want to share that doesn’t entirely fit that day’s theme, there will be an Encore section added on.

Sunday will be a Goal Setting and Update day. This will also keep track of my achievements and progress through material such as books and videos. It will also prepare for what I plan on doing that week in terms of study. This way if I’m not getting it done, I can be yelled at by anyone. You’ll see more of this effect once I get these going.

Tuesday will be based more of a random thoughts theme. Just kinda whatever is happening in my life, family, friends, etc. Just an update on how my life is going to change as I progress through the grind. Basically an all access pass to my head, those that know me can warn you on how fun that’ll be!

Thursday will be designed to do a Video review. I’m going to cross link it with the DC forum for video reviews to get feedback from both sources. Haven’t decided if I am going to do live play video review or replayer review, or session review. Guess we’ll try a few diff ones and it may also be based on time available. Will be looking to really get feedback and let people see what I see as I work through the levels.

Saturday will be a review day. I’m going to keep a year to date graph going each week, and also a weekly graph. Just kinda to see my volume, how things are going. Its not really anything I intend to use as a “Did great/terribad this week” type thing, just so people can see my graph/s. I will not be posting any allin ev type graphs as they are pointless. Basically just the standard 3 line graphs really. Also will probably do a few more detailed hand reviews and also a wrap up summary/review of whatever material I went over that week.

So this is basically the idea. I know it seems really elaborate, esp since I don’t have a following of much if any… But the structure will help me keep in a coherent and intelligible approach to this project.

Either love my wonderful quantity of updates, or more likely those that know me are probably almost amazed I really don’t have much to say…

The last week or two I have taken a lot of time off. Part of this is to take care of the real world stuff and such. Had my cousin crash this weekend, then saw my bud who’s visiting from Washington who I hadn’t seen in over a year. In about the past week I have also realized that I am beginning to finally beat my depression. I am finding myself confident, strong, and really seeing a lot of good. I still have plenty of room to work and am aware of that, but for once I’m not really hating on myself for it.

As for poker, just been watching videos, got some money moved over to FullTilt now. Really not a fan, esp since I still don’t have RB on it and Stars just upgraded their point system to an even better deal. Guess we’ll see what happens, keeping working 2p2 over for some miracle of getting a response from someone there. Anyone has info on it, get at me. Not tied to an affiliate and still haven’t made a first deposit yet.

Right now on competition Alex is ahead 3-2, and probably taking this week as he’s at goal and I couldn’t even careless about getting volume in. Next week is gonna be a warm up/test run of my grinding schedule for 2010. Kind of going to approach it like doctors do medical school. Lots of studying and practice! Going to really work my butt off. If anyone is interested in consistently reading this and would like more updates feel free to let me know and I’ll keep on it. Also any material requests feel free. I do wanna warp this into something worth reading over the next year as I hope it will show a transformation in my life.

So the score is Alex 4, Chris 2 with 7 weeks remaining. Still doable, I need to get more focused. I do believe I will be upping my goal to 10BI per week, so $250 instead of $200 starting first full week of January. Really wanna get a strong volume push so I can get to NL$50 ASAP.

Well until next, time take care everyone and have a happy holiday/s(I should post before New Years, I do hope.)

Okay so um volume last week was horrible. Between a surge in the family business and feeling horrible while finally kicking my caffeine addiction unintentionally but sure for the better… The saving grace was I did manage to make a stomping $20 after getting dropped $100 Sat afternoon, gotta love when you get in 19:1 and can’t hold a 3 outer and sets failing to gutters and the fun stuff like that. Didn’t bother me much, just sucked. But, poor Alex ran worse than crap last week which managed to secure us to a tie at 2-2 now after 4 weeks. The crap side is he is doing well this week and like 36 hours into the week had already hit his goal 100%, so yeah I’m just gonna hit a few MTTs this week and go for the super upset and just get through Scrubs so I can focus on the grind more next week w/ less distraction.

Outside of that, not a lot is going on… Been thinking about the long term goals I have, like moving to Vegas in a year or so if I can… Dunno, more to come I guess.

Oh and I still haven’t even hit Silver. Talk about a total slack month. Really annoyed at myself as I wanted to be nearing gold already…

Okay so concerning the grind I started back on 11/9/09. It’s been a little rough, having to overcome an actual downswing and having to push through it. I am still lucky my income isn’t dependent on poker winnings at this point so it does allow me to step back and breathe a bit when it gets ugly. I have roughly 61.5 hours in game play now for 21k hands running a win rate of 2.56BB/100. Much better than the ugly <1BB/100 I was at like 10-11 days ago. I’ve been really putting in more work, more concentration, more study to get my head reinforced into proper play. If you can do math you probably realize this is 4 weeks into the grind and I’m only at 60 hours where I should be at 80, so I’ve slacked some. I’m hoping to address that this upcoming week and start sticking to it more. I did put in a 16 hour week this week, so definitely not too bad!

Concerning this week I took this week in the contest. Chris 1, Alex 2; 10 weeks remaining. I slammed it home hard and fast on Monday. Got in a lot of time and volume, ran well and played solid. I also lit a few people up Friday for a quick session and nice mark. Alex had a bit of a slow week and a bit of rough frustrations that probably made it a bit of a safer feeling win Fri/Sat’ish.

Outside of that my social life is finally coming back a little bit after months of being poisoned by my past roommate and ruining my social skills. Pretty much just looking for good people to be around and not accepting trash anymore. I am really happy w/ the direction of my life, even if it does get a bit lonely on the girl front. The sacrifices one makes when investing in a potential future for them self. Got my new bed setup washed/on bed Friday, love it. Though apparently Satin slides really easy, but I’ve adjusted. The pillows are a little bit irritating as they want to slide out from under you some, but I’m getting the hang of the new tricky setup. I love how it looks, ESPECIALLY compared to my borderline ghetto look previously. Next for some new and nice towels, some nice pajamas+slippers, and I’ll be pretty happy w/ the changes. Life is definitely headed the right direction. I also want to give a shout out and big thank you to Alex, if he’s even reading, for really being one solid as hell friend this winter. I started to stumble a bit into my depression for the first time and he really helped me focus on the positive and highlight how far I have come since he’s known me in life and getting things turned around. I love having good friends, even if they are directional challenged Germans! =D