Frustrating day

Played a bunch on Stars today and renewed my Supernova status so it's now good until the end of September... in the process I lost about 4 buy-ins while multi-tabling full ring.  It's so frustrating getting coolered non-stop in full ring, I don't know how people can sit there and play that ever day.  I gave up with that, played some 6 max, ended up doing a lot better but still didn't win due to running like a midget with a broken leg.  Whatever, fuck it.

I'm taking a few days off and I'm looking forward to hanging with Liz.  I definitely need a few days away from poker, I'm super tilted right now.  Last hand to end the day... a 50 vpip drooler holding A4 turns a 4 vs my AK on AQX4 and ships for like a min raise on the turn.  FML.

Decent day

I didn't end up going to the office today so I just played from my apartment.  Played a bit of RUSH and regular 6 max and finished up about 6 buy-ins.  I actually ran quite badly as I had many spots where I just shipped it in as a favorite and got outdrawn by total droolers.  It happens, part of the game.

I've been working out regularly over the past 2 or 3 weeks or so and I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping it up.  I have a gym in my apartment building so there are 0 excuses for me to not be in shape.  I began just lifting weights every other day but now I'm trying to go there every day... so I am running 30 minutes per day on the treadmill and then lifting weights for one hour per day.  I am alternating between chest & shoulders on one day, and biceps & triceps on the other day, while mixing in other random exercises on each day too.

It's working out pretty well and I can already see that my upper body has a lot more shape and bulk... even some of my shirts don't fit anymore because my chest is too big.  I have also lost a bit of body fat around the stomach area which is always good too.

Plan is to hit the office hard tomorrow so I'm going to go to sleep a bit early and try and wake up before noon so I can hit the gym before I head to the office.

Fun Sunday

I had a lot of fun today, as Tim invited me over to his place and I spent the day there.  I watched him play a bit on his laptop then I played a few sessions as well.  His girlfriend, Maggie, was over too and we all ended up watching four "Lifetime" TV channel movies, lol.  The acting was pretty weak in a lot of them, haha but the movies were still fun.

Also, Tim cooked up a pretty kickass piece of marinated chicken and porkchop for dinner, which was quite tasty.  I'll have to return the favor and cook something at my apartment and invite them over sometime.

Poker ended up going really well today and despite only playing for a few hours I won quite a bit.  Yesterday wasn't that hot though, as I ended up losing a decent amount and ran $1.2k below EV for the second day in a row (Friday I ran pretty far below EV too).  The EV stat isn't really all that healthy or do that much good to look at but whatever, I do look at it.

I'm going to try and avoid making it a big deal in the future and also start doing a better job of not seeing how much I'm up or down for the day until I'm done playing for the day.  I'd like to say I'm not going to look until the month is over or something but let's be honest, that's going to be nearly impossible to do so I'm going to start out small.

It really kills my motivation to put in volume if I'm already up quite a bit to start off the day, which is silly because poker is just one long session over the span of my life.  It shouldn't matter if I start playing again an hour or two from my last session or the next day, unless I don't feel like I'd be playing well.

Great day despite getting pretty unlucky

Honestly, I don't really care if I ran pretty terribly... I still had one of the bigger daily wins that I've had in a while.  I finished the day up $1.8k after playing around 5k hands over 6 hours.  I played a bit of everything today... started out mass tabling $1-2 NL full ring, then played some regular $2-4 NL 6 max and even ended up playing in two amazing $5-10 NL 6 max games.

I'm pretty happy with my play overall.  Nutedawg was able to sweat me for about an hour or so while I was playing and that was very helpful.  I definitely learned a few things.

I did run pretty badly though... should have won $3k if I would have run at EV for all-ins.  The 5 times I got stacked, I could basically do nothing about.  Two of them were me losing with KK vs AA when we were all-in pre-flop.  I also lost when I had AA vs KK all-in pre-flop.  Lost a coin flip on the flop and lost a hand to quads in a ridiculous fashion.  The player in this hand was HORRID... he was running 78/31 over 109 hands and had run up a $3.4k stack at $2-4 NL at the time of this hand, lol.  He was so bad he's calling this full pot river shove with any pair for sure... he may even call that shove with nothing, play the board, and hope to split the pot too.

I'm glad I was able to have a good day at the tables though and hopefully this gives me momentum to finish off the month strong.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Good Weekend

Overall, I had a good weekend.  Friday night went as planned and Liz and I ended up going to Enclave and watching the Black Eyed Peas.  We both ended up getting pretty wasted though by the end of the night, haha.  The Black Eyed Peas performance was pretty limited, as it was just one guy on the mike and then a DJ that apparently was part of the group.  Also it seemed like it took forever for them to actually go on stage and do something too because two slobs just ended up dancing on stage for probably over 30 minutes.  It was a fun night though.

I ended up hanging with Liz for a bit on Saturday then spent the rest of the weekend playing poker.  I tried my luck at the Sunday Million today and of course I standardly lost a coin flip with AKs vs 77 to bust.  I played cash the rest of the day today and ended up winning despite running pretty poorly.

Here are some pics from the weekend.

Great Day!

I rebounded like a Champion today.  I played about 4 sessions of RUSH and finished even... I don't know what it is about RUSH but it's so goddamn frustrating sometimes.  I mean, I am folding hands near the top of my range post-flop all the time and making the correct folds.  It almost seems like regs have near 0% bluffing frequencies on multi-barrel bets and raises as you're shown a monster when lots of chips fly in the middle almost always.

So I got fed up with RUSH and just switched to normal 6 max and tried to table select so I'd be sitting at a table with at least one huge clown.  I ended up finding some pretty big fish and stacking them in some huge pots for 200NL.  Here's the biggest hand of the day, a 500bb pot win vs. a massive fish.

It was refreshing to not have the constant pressure of decisions like in RUSH for a change.  I think I'm going to abandon RUSH for a bit and just focus on normal 6 max for a while because of the luxuries of making sure a massive fish is there donating.  So overall for the day I ended up close to 8 buy-ins over 10 hours worth of play.  So I definitely put in quite a bit of time at the tables today.

Tonight Liz and I are planning on going to a club called Enclave to see the Black Eyed Peas, so that should be fun.  I'm pretty tired from putting in so many hours today so I'm going to hit the hay.

Crappy day

Stayed up all night basically playing RUSH and got my ass kicked.  I got soooooo unlucky.  There were so many clowns that won flips against me it was ridiculous.  I had someone 3-bet/5-bet 66 vs my button 4-bet when I hadn't even been doing anything crazy and of course he holds.  Tons of other similar bullshit, like a person with a 20% 3-bet stat over like 200 hands snapping my all-in jam when I have AK and holding with QQ.  Super standard of course but damn, RUSH really sucks when 4-5 of those go the wrong way right in a row.

I think I may quit playing RUSH, at least for a while and play normal 6 max.  The thing that sucks about it, is that you don't have a fish at your table every hand... so often times it's like 3 nits and 2 other regulars.  The volume is nice but even though I feel I have a huge edge on the regs I'm just not winning the variance war right now, which is frustrating because they are doing tons of terrible shit and getting away with it due to lucksacking.

Rant over.

Grind Time

Worked a ton today.  Ended up playing a few sessions to start off the day, which went really well as I finished up about 5 buy-ins.  Then I spent some time watching Nute play and man did he run like shit... it was surreal.

After he called it a day I put in another solid 5 hours or so and that session didn't go quite as well because I broke even.  I had some pretty coolerish type hands... middle set vs flopped straight, top two pair in a 3-bet pot vs top set, etc.  I think I played OK but spewed a bit.

I'm planning on putting in a ton of hands in the next few days so hopefully I can crush the games.

Lollapalooza!!!

This past weekend Liz and I went to Lollapalooza in Chiacgo.  It was pretty awesome.  I've never seen so many people in one place before.

On Friday night, Liz wanted to go see Lady Gaga so we went to her show.  I was actually really impressed with the performance she put on.  It had great energy and she had lots of cool costumes and outfits she wore.  She's also quite the character and seems to be a very intense person.

Before we went to see Lady Gaga on Friday we ate at this really awesome restaurant in the Hard Rock Hotel called "China Grill."  The food was quite tasty and I'd definitely go back again.  The restaurant itself also had a pretty sweet look inside.

After Lady Gaga, we walked out of Grant Park and ended up walking around Millennium Park which was fun as well. We got a few cool pictures thanks to the huge metal bean there.

Saturday night we went to Green Day.  They played a lot of their older music and at first I was under the impression that they wouldn't be as active and as interesting on stage as Lady Gaga.  I was wrong.  Their lead singer, Billie Joe, was amazing.  He had so much energy and enthusiasm it was incredible.  He really knew how to get the crowd into the music.  I really liked the music they played as well, probably a bit more than Lady Gaga's music.  They had lots of fireworks and fire shooting out randomly on stage to help create some excitement.  We also got a lot closer to the stage for this one, as at the end we were probably only 75 yards away from the right part of the stage.  When we saw Lady Gaga we were probably around 350 yards away from the stage. We ended up getting a ride home from the park on a bicycle taxi for two, which was cool.

On Sunday, we ended up meeting some of my friends for lunch.  Then we left lunch intending to go to Erykah Badu at 5 PM after Liz got done getting a pedicure.  By the time we got over there though, it was too late to get to her show so we just ended up wondering around, grabbing a bite to eat, and looking at the fountain in Grant Park.  Afterwards, we checked out the pool at my apartment (which surprisingly enough I hadn't done yet) and relaxed in the hot tub for a bit before calling it a weekend.

It was a fun weekend with my awesome girlfriend and I'll probably go to this event again next year.

Here are some pics from our weekend adventure.  Liz took some really amazing pics!!!

2010 ND State Sporting Clays Champion!

I ended up shooting well enough in the main event this past weekend to win the North Dakota State Sporting Clays Championship!  I shot a 177/200 and the next closest competitor shot a 165/200 so I won by a decent margin.  Honestly I felt that I could have shot a lot better than I did, but it really didn't matter since I ended up winning my second state championship in a row.  I have won the main sporting event now a total of four times.

We shot the main event with my good friend Kevin Weber and his Dad, Greg.  We also shot the other two events (sub-gauge and 5-stand) with them.  They are in some of the pictures below, along with my Dad and brother.

The main event was shot on Sunday and we also shot two events on Saturday.  We began Saturday with shooting the sub-gauge event.  I ended up winning that event as well with a 89/100.  Then we shot the 5-stand event on Saturday afternoon and I shot pretty terribly in that, hitting 79/100 and got 4th place overall.  I had won the State 5-stand event 5 out of the past 5 times I had entered it, so basically every year since 2004 except for 2008 when they scheduled the state 5-stand shoot during the U.S. Open.  Since I shot the U.S. Open I ended up missing it that year.

My Dad and my brother didn't end up doing as well as they could.  My Dad shot decent in the sub-gauge event and ended up getting second place.  However, for the main event there is a 3-man team trophy and my Dad, Chad, and I formed a team to win that by only 3 targets!  So it was a close battle for that trophy.

Overall, it was a fun weekend.  The targets we kind of weird and there were tons of true pairs so that was kind of different.  We also ended up getting hit by shot from another station one time but I had my shooting glasses on so I wasn't hurt.  My Dad ended up getting hit in the shoulder but it didn't come in too fast to hurt him either.  The attendance was way down this year, probably  because when it was in Bismarck in 2006 the shoot was a huge fiasco so a lot of people who would have normally attended the State shoot didn't end up going to it because it was in Bismarck.

I flew back to Chicago on Tuesday and I'm going to be staying here for a while and getting in tons of poker.  I've played a decent amount today and am up about 3 buy-ins but I'm not running that well at all so hopefully that changes for the better.

In other news, I'm totally pumped that the Blackhawks were able to sign Marty Turco.  This is a huge signing for them, in my opinion, because Turco is actually way better than Niemi anyways so I am betting that Turco is one of the best goalies in the league this upcoming season due to such a solid team and defense in front of him.  Hopefully the Hawks are able to defend the Cup!!!

Here are some pictures from the state shoot: