Poker Office!

So I've been super busy over the last few days setting up the poker office Tim and I are going to be playing at. We also hired a personal assistant to take care of random shit that needs to be done so we can focus on playing poker.

It ended up taking about two full days from the point of getting the office keys to the point of being all set up and ready to go. The office turned out amazingly well. Basically, it is the ultimate grind station. The sectional couch we ended up getting turned out quite comfortable and Tim brought over his 50'' flat screen TV since he just upgraded. Also, we have a new PS3 with a few games that will be great for taking a break between sessions. The break room is pretty nice as well and has a fridge, microwave, and storage for random snacks.

Enough with the typing already, here are the pics:

Chicago Update

I moved to Chicago 13 days ago and so far, so good. I'm having a lot of fun here, meeting new friends, and organizing/furnishing my apartment. The weather here is actually much nicer than North Dakota too. On average, it seems that the temperature is approximately 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer compared to how cold ND has been over the past few weeks.

The first few weeks have actually been really hectic, as I've had to go shopping for every single piece of furniture I thought I needed for my place because all I was able to fit in the vehicle I came to the city with was my clothes and computers.

Finally I'm getting to the point where I'm nearly finished furnishing my apartment. When it's all done I'll take some pics and post it to the blog. I now have a bed, dresser, nightstands, couch, kitchen table, computer desk, lounge chair, bar stools, end-tables, 55'' LCD 1080p flat-screen HDTV + Bose sound, and a PS3. The only things left on the list are a TV stand (already ordered, just waiting for it to arrive), lamps (also on the way) and getting around to buying random kitchen cookware, dishes, and utensils. After that, I should be set.

I absolutely love my place. The view is pretty awesome. I'll put some pics at the end of this post of the view from my apartment.

The people here have been great as well. I went out again on New Year's Eve with my new friend Tony and his friend. We ended up bar hopping and had a good time.

Poker is going a lot better as well since those last two tiltposts I made in my blog. Basically, now I'm back on track and having a great month so far.

HILARIOUS

I took like a 3-4 hour break after last session and decided hey, I'm just going to put in another session... doesn't matter if I wait until tomorrow or play again today, it's all for the long run right?

Well FUCK ME. I switched sites, in the hopes that would help, and played 44 hands and lost $821.25. I managed to run $1,305.62 below all-in EV in 12 minutes. So add that to the 8 buyins I ran below EV earlier today and now I'm down 11 total buyins in EV for the day and that doesn't even include the coolers. I had no coolers in my favor either. EH OH EL at the people who say bankrolls of 30-60 buy-ins are enough for the games these days if you're a full-time pro. I am glad I'm a huge bankroll nit and almost always play on 100+ buyins for my regular games. The swings are just so sick.

Mentally, I'm done for the day. These were the two hands that I played. Keep in mind i have 0 reads on these players, as I JUST sat down and I've NEVER played with them before since I rarely play on this site. Yea it's 4-handed, etc. but man wtf. This hand happened first and this one about 3 minutes later on the same table. Standard, I know, but why does it seem like all this shit has to happen on one single day? So maddening.

I'm aware I'm being way too focused on short term results right now with this rant. Whatever. I'm very competitve and it's annoying when you totally own the fuck out of someone and they lucksack it to victory. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but appearantly it still gets to me when shit hits the fan all at once in one day and just never stops.

I'm not playing any more today since I'm obviously cursed, and I'm going to take a shower, eat some more food, begin installing Windows 7 on my desktop for my apartment and get that all set up and re-vamped, and start re-reading the poker mindset beucase obviously my mental game still isn't perfect due to these last two blog posts. I can't help it. Fucking frustrating.

Goals for 2010 are coming up later tonight too. I promise.

Fuck this

Warning: tilt/whine post coming.

Unreal. Ok so I didn't post how much I won yesterday because I wanted to continue the run good. LOL. Yea right, like that was going to happen. I won about $4.3k yesterday and lost it nearly all back in one single 3 hour session by dumping $3,900 in about 1,000 hands. Such bullshit.


I only ended up felting someone once and I got sent to the felt 10 times. It was almost like it was a nightmare/joke/dream. I went 1/5 in flips and got coolered once pretty hardcore as well as one of the most ridiculous suckouts + terribad play from my opponents I've seen in a while. Of the other stacks I lost, once was with TPTK to a flushdraw on the turn... the other two were basically postflop coolers vs regs. One was my JJ to KK on a rag flop in a 3-bet pot in a blind vs button war and the other was where the reg lucksacked a low trips after I slowplayed a high pair vs his UTG raise.

Whatever, fuck it. It's not that big of a deal but damn this is annoying. I was absoultely CRUSHING the games before today. I was up $12k over 11,000 hands at $2/4 NL with a winrate of 13.77 BB/100. I'm still doing really well for so early in the month so there's no reason to panic. I just have to vent about this so I don't throw a rock through my window.

2010 goals are coming later today and I'm sure a lot of it will have to be goals to improve my mindset as there's really no reason to get worked up about running 8 buyins below all in EV. Super standard.

MONSTER DAY

I'm not going to say how much or post any graphs. I don't want to get doomswitched. All there is to know is I played well today and ran super duper hot (which is nice for a change). Sickest thing is, I probably made 2-3 big mistakes that cost me my stack today over the 7 hours I played for.... so I could have won even more.

I was actually going to go swing dancing tonight but when I got over there I found out that they were not having it this week due to it being New Year's weekend, etc. So GG $30 in taxi fare, but at least I was able to go home and make some monies.

I will post that update on Chicago I promised as well as some form of 2010 goals or outlook tomorrow. I'm pretty exhausted right now.

LOLDONKAMENTS

So for some reason, I had the urge to play the Sunday Million on Sunday. So I used my FPPs and bought in... and actually did quite well. I ended up getting 135th place out of 8,900. I wish I could have hung in there a bit longer, as first place was a healthy $250,000.

I won a big flip midway through the tourney with AK vs QQ which gave me a decent stack to work with in the middle stages. My downfall was a flip as well, however. His call there is pretty horrid, in my opinion. He's not really getting all that great of odds on his call and he's likely either crushed or flipping. My stack is really too large for me to just be shipping some random suited connector there I think.

Oh well, what can you do? I got the money in good, played pretty well overall in the tourney, and managed to cash. I also played some cash games while I was playing the tournament and finished up in cash as well. So overall I had a pretty good day.

I'm going to try and find some time tomorrow to talk a bit about Chicago and what I did on New Year's Eve. Also, I'll outline some goals for 2010.

2009 Recap

Overall, 2009 was a great year for me. Although I didn't make as much as I did in 2008, poker was still quite profitable for me. I still ended up making around 2-3xs more playing poker than I could have made if I was using my business management degree in some type of managerial position. A few of the likely reasons for my profit decline in 2009 were actually major reasons why 2009 was such a great year for me life-wise.

My first year as a full time pro in 2008, I worked extra hours and extra hard at my game because I had not proven over the long-term that I was capable of doing poker for my full time job. The result of all that hard work was the best profit I've ever had in a year. However, I was very focused on my poker game and really didn't do anything to enrich my life in other ways. Of course I still played hockey, hung out with friends, went hunting, and went to sporting clays shoots... but I stayed within my comfort zones in regards to my social life as well as traveling.

In 2009, I decided to alter my priorities a bit and I'm glad I did. I made it a point to travel around the U.S. visiting friends and making new ones. Before 2009, the majority of the places I had traveled to in my life were due to either family vacations or sporting clays shoots. I had really only traveled to a few significant places on my own agenda. In 2009 I ended up spending time traveling to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Kentucky, and Chicago.

While I was in Vegas in March, I finally warmed up a bit to the whole club/bar scene and started getting a lot more social. Before, I guess I was like any normal person... I would go out with my friends for the night and mainly just hang out with them and speak to them only. I've always had a healthy number of friends and been decently outgoing with that group. However, in March, my friends and I just started randomly striking up conversations with strangers and it really made "going out" at night to a club or bar a lot more fun for me. Before it had been kind of boring because generally there's only so much you can discuss and talk about with some of your best friends you've known for years... especially if you've been hanging out with them a lot recently. So adding random people into the conversation mix not only makes going out more fun, but allows for the opportunity to meet new friends.

This probably sounds weird to some naturally outgoing people... but talking to total strangers with the intention of getting to know them wasn't something I did on a regular basis before 2009. Now I have a bunch of cool friends that live all around the U.S. (and a few in the UK too!) in addition to my closest friends from home.

The best trip I made in 2009 was the 36 days I spent in Vegas during the WSOP when I lived in a house with 6 other online poker pros. I spoke about it in previous blogs, but basically we played poker, went out a ton, and I ended up meeting some really great friends from that experience. We've already booked a house again for during the WSOP in 2010 so I'm looking forward to June for sure.

Getting a lot more involved in poker coaching was another great thing that happened to me in 2009. In 2008 I only had a few students, just for the last 2-3 months of the year. But in 2009 I coached over a dozen students and now have over 20 former students. I had a lot of fun coaching them and it was pretty rewarding to see most of them improve their games. I hope to re-start my coaching services perhaps sometime in March of 2010.

And of course the cherry on the top of 2009 was my move to Chicago. Although I miss my family and all my great friends in ND, I think it was time for a change. I had accomplished about all I could in ND and the city is just not anywhere near as entertaining or fun as a bigger city like LA, Chicago, or San Diego. I love Chicago so far and I hope living here is a springboard for 2010 to be the best year for me both poker-wise and life-wise yet!

I'm going to create some solid poker-related goals as well as life-goals for 2010 sometime this weekend. I didn't really have any specific goals for 2009 and I think a little more direction will be helpful to motivate myself to always play my best at the poker tables.

I'll end this post with my biggest losing and winning poker hands of 2009.


Biggest loser


Biggest winner



I wish everyone the best of luck in 2010!