Went to the Dr. for my wife's 20 week ultrasound earlier today. You know the one where if baby cooperates they can determine the sex. Well I'm happy to say that baby cooperated (mostly) and it's a boy.
I'm pretty excited and watching him roll around and give the tech a hard time was great fun. Can't wait to meet him in early Nov.
PS - I'd post the ultrasound pics but I'm afraid eNTy would use them in one of his fetus fetish posts. Damn weirdo waffle-eaters!
As for poker, we the last 2 days have sucked but whatever. Life's GREAT!
June 17, 2009
May 19, 2009
Pokery Update and Other News
Well let's see it's been 2 months so I guess a big recap is in order.
March was basically spent entirely at 50nl and ended up being decent. I won at 5BB/100 but only got in ~14K hands. Still it was a solid winning month and I hadn't really been having those so very positive.
Unfortunately April didn't see the trend continue. Well I did end up for the month overall (barely) my graph for April basically looked like this, V. It was an interesting month because I decided to start the month playing 6-max. The problem is that I ABSOLUTELY SUCK AT 6-MAX!!!! After I realized this and moved back to FR 50nl I won at a little less than 5BB/100 and recovered my loses for the month.
I guess the FR parts my past 2 months led into the perfect storm that has been May thus far. I started the month with a fairly small BR because I cashed out (via transfers to friends) about $1200 to pay for my WVU football tickets. In the 17 days I have played since I have more than doubled my BR! I began the month at 50nl and won at 13BB/100 for 5K hands. I also started staking KingCurtis from CC at the beginning of the month and he had a big cash to pad my roll by about $180 so far. Anyway after 1 week of play I was rolled to take yet another shot at 100nl. Predictably it started a little down when my first 2 sessions I lost 2 buy-ins but then things turned around in a HUGE way. On the month I have played 9K hands at 100nl and I'm winning at 9BB/100 (including a 7BI downswing in the middle). It's been pretty sick. I'm running better than expected in all-in pots (about 2 BIs better) and I just think I'm playing better poker than I have for a long time. I'm seeing lines, making great reads and more important than anything else I've stopped tilting my $$ away!
To help with the tiling, I've been following the breathing techniques espoused by Tommy Angelo and Jared Tendler. I've started reading books on meditation and practicing it away from the tables. I'm trying to play (and live) in the moment and focus completely on whatever it is that I am doing at the moment. Being able to instantly forget (or clear) a bad beat, or even more importantly for me a bad play, has made a huge improvement in my game. Taking control of my breath is what's helping me to return to the moment and concentrate fully on the hand I am currently playing. I know it sounds like hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo but it works for me, so I don't care. It's also helping me to play longer sessions and at the same time quit just at the time when I'm no longer able to play my best. It's a really great feeling.
And now with all that out of the way, I come to the biggest news of all; I'm going to be a Dad!!! My wife of 10 years, as of a few days ago, and I have been trying for years. We've (well mostly she's) gone through fertility treatments and we were getting set to pay serious $$ for invetro-fertilization when she got pregnant the old fashion way! I like to tell people that I actually got to be in the room during the conception because we just didn't think that was possible. It's such a great feeling and I'm so excited to be a Dad. She's due in early November (she's about 15 weeks in) and so far she's doing great.
Well there it is, a great (big) update. Things are really great at the moment and that's all I can ask for.
See you in a couple months???
March 16, 2009
Hey, Anybody Here?
Wow, looks like it's been a while. I'm still around. Still playing poker. Still doing dumb things. Only thing that's different is that I stopped updating this blog. Well I guess technically this post means that I haven't stopped, I've just slowed WAYYYYY dawn!
Anyway, there be no further BR or goals type posts here. Just random hands,a few stray thoughts, and maybe a life update or two.
The purpose of this update to to post a video I did about a week ago and posted to blip.tv. It runs about 45 minutes and it's only 2 tables so it's rather boring but enough of me trying to sell it. :)
Please feel free to comment here or in the CC thread I started for the vid.
Anyway, there be no further BR or goals type posts here. Just random hands,a few stray thoughts, and maybe a life update or two.
The purpose of this update to to post a video I did about a week ago and posted to blip.tv. It runs about 45 minutes and it's only 2 tables so it's rather boring but enough of me trying to sell it. :)
Please feel free to comment here or in the CC thread I started for the vid.
January 24, 2009
Running With The Devil
No, not the Van Halen song, I'm referring to my current dalliance with 6-max pokers! I know, I know, I vowed to never go back because the variance and tilt inducing suckouts were too much for my fragile brain. So what made me change my mind? The Charlie Daniels Band! You see I was listening to The Devil Went Down to Georgia a few weeks ago and I realized that the Devil (is it proper to capitalize Devil like you do with God?) is beatable and the reward for beating the Devil is a golden fiddle! Now since I don't play the fiddle, I'll have to sell it but I figure I can get a good price for it by sending it to Cash4Gold! So beating the Devil has become my new goal.
In addition to the golden fiddle I realized that most of the players at 50nl 6-max are horrible AND 6-max seems to have virtually zero short-stackers (short-stackers are the current plague of FR poker IMO). An example from earlier tonight:
Note that the shortest stack is 70bbs deep and we're able to get the villain to put ~120bbs into the middle with TPNK. This craziness of course leads to some sick variance but I think the overall horrible play should make 6-max more profitable overall especially since I was never able to play more than 8 tables of FR anyway.
Anyway, only 5500 hands at 6max so far, but I'm running at a respectable 5.7BB/100 thus far. We'll see how it plays out over a larger sample. Oh yeah, and for all you young children who have no idea who The Charlie Daniels Band is, here's your YouTube video.
In addition to the golden fiddle I realized that most of the players at 50nl 6-max are horrible AND 6-max seems to have virtually zero short-stackers (short-stackers are the current plague of FR poker IMO). An example from earlier tonight:
Note that the shortest stack is 70bbs deep and we're able to get the villain to put ~120bbs into the middle with TPNK. This craziness of course leads to some sick variance but I think the overall horrible play should make 6-max more profitable overall especially since I was never able to play more than 8 tables of FR anyway.
Anyway, only 5500 hands at 6max so far, but I'm running at a respectable 5.7BB/100 thus far. We'll see how it plays out over a larger sample. Oh yeah, and for all you young children who have no idea who The Charlie Daniels Band is, here's your YouTube video.
January 16, 2009
January Mid-Month and 100th Post
Just realized this is my 100th blog post (according to the blogspot software anyway but the numbers on the front page say it's only 97???) which is about 87 more post than I ever thought I'd have. Anyway just thought it worth noting, now on to the update.
Well if you've read my posts this month you know that the month started out rough (-$600 in the 1st 6 days). Since then I'm up $1060 which means I'm up a little more than $450 overall. Add in rakeback and the portion of my Full Tilt year-end bonus that I have cleared thus far and it's just about $700 profit thus far in just about 15K hands (a HUGE number of hands for me).
I'm conflicted overall on the month. On one hand I'm up and, running / playing good. On the other, the start of the month really was the suck and even though I'm certainly rolled for 100nl I've been playing 50nl almost exclusively because at 100 I play horribly and bleed $$! I'm working on it and I really believe it's a mental thing but it tilts me that I haven't been able to move up successfully.
Graph (wish it wouldn't hold so much water but whatever):
Oh and there you go Ice, someone else doing a mid-month! :)
Well if you've read my posts this month you know that the month started out rough (-$600 in the 1st 6 days). Since then I'm up $1060 which means I'm up a little more than $450 overall. Add in rakeback and the portion of my Full Tilt year-end bonus that I have cleared thus far and it's just about $700 profit thus far in just about 15K hands (a HUGE number of hands for me).
I'm conflicted overall on the month. On one hand I'm up and, running / playing good. On the other, the start of the month really was the suck and even though I'm certainly rolled for 100nl I've been playing 50nl almost exclusively because at 100 I play horribly and bleed $$! I'm working on it and I really believe it's a mental thing but it tilts me that I haven't been able to move up successfully.
Graph (wish it wouldn't hold so much water but whatever):
Oh and there you go Ice, someone else doing a mid-month! :)
January 10, 2009
Above the X-axis!
Well we're 10 days into January and after my oh so shitty start, chronicled below, I've finally made my way back into the green!
I've played a ton of poker for me (almost 10K hands or an average day for Zachvac) thus far and I guess the start of the month was just some bad variance that led to some pretty bad tilt. The last few days I've been generally on the good side of variance and I'm playing better as a result. I did make a few small changes, upping my flop cbet by about 7% (57% first 5 days to 65% last 5 days) and I've just been more aggressive overall. Some of the number changes are surely attributed to just running well and hitting more flops but I really have made a conscious effort to cbet more. There is a really good cbetting discussion over on CardsChat right now. Check it out here.
I'd like to thank those who left words of encouragement after my last rant. They are always appreciated.
I'll leave you with my favorite hand from tonight's session:
I've played a ton of poker for me (almost 10K hands or an average day for Zachvac) thus far and I guess the start of the month was just some bad variance that led to some pretty bad tilt. The last few days I've been generally on the good side of variance and I'm playing better as a result. I did make a few small changes, upping my flop cbet by about 7% (57% first 5 days to 65% last 5 days) and I've just been more aggressive overall. Some of the number changes are surely attributed to just running well and hitting more flops but I really have made a conscious effort to cbet more. There is a really good cbetting discussion over on CardsChat right now. Check it out here.
I'd like to thank those who left words of encouragement after my last rant. They are always appreciated.
I'll leave you with my favorite hand from tonight's session:
January 5, 2009
January SUCKS!
Ok so far this month, I've played 4300 hands (trying to get that $100 Jagsti bonus). In those 4300 hands I've won 3 full stacks. In those same 4300 hands I've lost 12 full fucking stacks. It's set over set. It's KK v. AA. It's AA v villain's flopping fucking sets in 3bet pots. It's villains slowplaying fucking KK and AA preflop every fucking time I hold QQ. It's all this shit adding up to me fucking tilting and shipping stacks with weird random shit when the villain holds the immortal fucking nuts. It's the fucking bonus chasing bullshit. It's running bad and playing worse. It's the fact that when I do take somebody's stack they are a fucking short-stacking POS!
Here now for your viewing pleasure is every full stack hand I've played the first 2 days of the year. I'd show them all but they get pretty repetitive after a while. Besides you get the point, I suck at the pokers.
Day 1:
Day 2:
End result is that I've dropped almost 11 buy-ins in 4 days. I'm dropping back to 25nl for a bit while I see if I really can play this game. I'm actually starting to think that I had the world's luckiest bout of beginner's luck when I started playing cash and this is just the universe righting itself. Guess we'll see.
Here now for your viewing pleasure is every full stack hand I've played the first 2 days of the year. I'd show them all but they get pretty repetitive after a while. Besides you get the point, I suck at the pokers.
Day 1:
Day 2:
End result is that I've dropped almost 11 buy-ins in 4 days. I'm dropping back to 25nl for a bit while I see if I really can play this game. I'm actually starting to think that I had the world's luckiest bout of beginner's luck when I started playing cash and this is just the universe righting itself. Guess we'll see.
January 3, 2009
All that was. All that will be.
Little late on the whole reflecting back on the year that was / looking forward to the year ahead post but here it is anyway.
2008 Summary
I moved $200 of my online BR to Full Tilt at the beginning of last year and after delaying several months I finally started playing there in March full time. I started out above my BR at 25nl and thanks to a nice little heater never looked back. I had never really played a lot of cash games prior to the move but thanks to the fine posters over at CC I learned quickly and the first few months were nothing but profit. I managed to stay profitable until November and I lost modest amounts (with rakeback and a few tourneys included) in both November and December. Here is the obligatory cash graph:
And my monthly summary:
As you can see from the above chart I netted about $1850 profit from ring games and another $1225 from rackback for a total ring profit of ~$3075. I also manage to clear just over $1000 in tournament winnings (thanks largely to a ~$1K 4th place in the rakebreak freeroll). Throw in another $600 from bonuses and my total yearly winnings are a little better than $4500.
Not too shabby considering where I started (not to mention how I finished) and the fact that I really didn't start playing any real volume until June.
2009 Goals / Dreams / Why the fuck not
1. Play well
2. Tilt less
3. 500K hands*
4. $40K profits*
5. Have fun
6. Study
7. Post here more than I have been for a few months
Well that's it. Here's to a safe, happy and prosperous New Year for everyone. Good luck all.
* All numbers are inflated, see ChuckTs blog for the reason)
2008 Summary
I moved $200 of my online BR to Full Tilt at the beginning of last year and after delaying several months I finally started playing there in March full time. I started out above my BR at 25nl and thanks to a nice little heater never looked back. I had never really played a lot of cash games prior to the move but thanks to the fine posters over at CC I learned quickly and the first few months were nothing but profit. I managed to stay profitable until November and I lost modest amounts (with rakeback and a few tourneys included) in both November and December. Here is the obligatory cash graph:
And my monthly summary:
As you can see from the above chart I netted about $1850 profit from ring games and another $1225 from rackback for a total ring profit of ~$3075. I also manage to clear just over $1000 in tournament winnings (thanks largely to a ~$1K 4th place in the rakebreak freeroll). Throw in another $600 from bonuses and my total yearly winnings are a little better than $4500.
Not too shabby considering where I started (not to mention how I finished) and the fact that I really didn't start playing any real volume until June.
2009 Goals / Dreams / Why the fuck not
1. Play well
2. Tilt less
3. 500K hands*
4. $40K profits*
5. Have fun
6. Study
7. Post here more than I have been for a few months
Well that's it. Here's to a safe, happy and prosperous New Year for everyone. Good luck all.
* All numbers are inflated, see ChuckTs blog for the reason)
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