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Registration code: 587129

Somebody leave me a comment telling me to update my blog, I promise I’ll start posting again.

Just finished a session. Had a couple pretty interesting hands. I quit down just a little bit and feel fine about it. I ran about 500 under EV for the day though. Happens.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403520 – complete set-up but fun to win these every once in awhile.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403616 – Such a sick spot. Villains’ 3bet range was really small. Hands I like he plays like this are AA/QQ/88/AK-AJ???

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403674 – Same guy, this time a gross river, but worked out. I wasn’t sure if I liked b/c, c/c, or c/f.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3403844 – LOL @ these A88 flops. Another spot where I felt like I was chopping or beat. These are the sickest spots in NLHE.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3404196 - WFT hand of the day. Tytyty.

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Tomorrow is Election Day and I am pretty excited. In fact, so excited that we are actually having a party here tomorrow night to view the results. It should be fun cause I have friends coming that are both liberal and conservative (but mostly liberal) so hopeful we get some good prop bets going or something. My guess is at some point we’ll stop careing and just BBQ and watch the Sharks game. OH!

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I got a new TV. Well, even more. 52” Sharp 1080p LCD HDTV, Yamaha Surround Sound System, and a blueray player. Also, got HD challenge and a DVR from Comcast. Took me a day and a half to get it all set up, but it is awesome. The only thing I need to ‘fix’ is the remote which I managed to break. I was trying to program it for the new TV, but accidentally reset it and it doesn’t work for anything anymore, not even the cable box. Gonna try to get it replaced tomorrow.

Wow, interesting day of poker. It can be summed up nicely with a great graph:

I started off running awfully, went on a nice run, and then had a pretty awful downfall and end up about $700 under EV (heh, I only complain about running under EV, but never brag about running good. I promise next time I run significantly well I’ll post it.).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270100 – like 3^rd hand of the day. Good way to start.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270137 – I had a feeling about this one.

Went on a nice run thanks to my opponents:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270205 – Thank you (actually looking back that could be a pretty good spot to bluff for the villain).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270623

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270775

Then this guy totally owned the fuck outta me (he was not good):

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270879 – standard

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270971 – Ugh

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3270985 – Yup

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3271019 – After looking at the other hands this spot is sooooo sick. Ok he is 100% c/minraiseing trips, a straight, or a boat on the turn, and is never bluff raising this river, so his river bet is exactly 86 or 77. But can I fold here? I didn’t.

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After all the real poker and dinner, we played a marathon session of Chinese poker, where I destroyed Seth (cardcore). I value his money a lot higher then the rest of the table. =)

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Oh during this all of this, I was watching the live stream of the WSOPE ME. This thing was insane, as the final has been running for almost 24 hours. These guys must be exhaust… and as I write this John Juanda just took down the bracelet. Congrats JJ.

GG September.

I don’t have any real feelings towards the outcome of September. After everything added up with rakeback, ect. I came out just over a $7,000 winner. That’s a solid number that allows me to live comfortably, but at the same time I am a bit disappointed with the number of actual hands I spent playing poker. My goal was around 25k, and I barely eclipsed 15,000. But, I don’t play poker to necessarily make hundreds of thousands of dollars; rather I like the life style it provides me. Which says if I don’t feel like working, don’t. At the same time, this was supposed to be grind month, so I am a bit conflicted.

Next month hopefully I’ll pull off 5 digits, and everybody will be happy. By everybody I mean me. =)

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Over the past couple weeks I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and made my way through a bunch of books.

Fierce Invalids from Hot Climates - Tom Robins

A Pray for Owen Meany – John Irving

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Elements of Poker – Tommy Angelo

I will say the first three were all very solid and would recommend them, but as only the last one is a poker book it’s the only one I’m gonna go into any further detail.

Let me start off by saying that in this point in my career I honestly believe there is little that can really be gained from reading most poker books. I do not need to learn the fundamentals of poker, nor how most authors would play a particular situation. That said, there were three factors that lead me to purchasing this particular book. Even though I know almost nothing about Tommy Angelo, I had seen his name come up a couple times on the 2+2 forums with nothing but good things spoken about his coaching. Then Raptor mentioned in his blog that he was doing some coaching with Tommy Angelo. And lastly a friend recently mentioned he just picked up the book himself and it had little to do actually how to play poker, and more so the mental stuff.

Ok, so after reading the book I think it can be summed up pretty easily: Always play you’re A-game and don’t tilt, bad shit is gonna happen to you so deal with it. It was kinda funny because I read ‘The Secret’ not so long ago, and it was basically contradicting that whole idea of think positively. Because he was so respected by a lot of the members of the poker forums I expected him to focus a lot on internet poker stuff, but the internet poker section is literally 2 pages long. I would say if you are an internet player looking to get into live games he gave an excellent write up of proper edict and procedure of live play. Which is worth reading. But beyond that I was a little disappointed with the book as a whole. Oh well, like I said before I am at the point that I can’t really expect all that much from a book anyways. Though I would love it if Phil Galfond wrote something. =)

I have a splitting headache right now. I donno where that came from cause I don’t get headaches often, but it’s been on and off all day. Poker today was also quite the headache. Got off to an awful start and just grinded forever to get back to even. It wasn’t the fun kinda robusto either, more like slamming your cock in a door a punch of times wondering the next time if it is gonna hurt more or less. Let’s just get the graph outta the way:

Also, here are some of the more interesting or fun hands from the last day or two:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3241440 – I think this is a pretty interesting spot. The villain should be donking the flush here like 110%, but I guess he undonked himself into a nice win. I think my line is alright.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3244777 – Bink!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3248584 – This hand is pretty LOL. I think the c/r here on the end is good in theory, but nice check buddy.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3248720 – so much for soul reads.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249434 – This hand really perplexes me. I really am unsure of the best line, so if anyone has any ideas let me know. I could bet/call the flop, but the board is so dry most of his range the is getting it in is Kx and most under pairs will come along on the turn anyways. So now on the turn, my plan was to c/r all in, but then he pot donks it. That is strong right? Can I fold now? Seems really weak to me though. I donno. I could bet/call turn? Like I said I am unsure about this spot.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249454 – This guy ran up a nice stack.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249741 – Another villain playing a hand as bad as possible but still getting paid off the max.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249749 – Unlucky, probably don’t even need to post crap like this.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249900 – I liked this hand, thank you for not making me look stupid.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3249918 – Just a sick sick flop. All these flush hands kinda summarize my day. Oh well, it woulda been a cooler for him too.

Sorry for all the hands histories (though I assume if you don’t care about them you can skip em, and if you like them then the more the merrier). I have been kinda trying to push myself to play some more 2/4nl. Like I have said before, I am rolled for it so me not playing more is just –EV in opportunity cost, but the big swings still can kinda get to me.

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On another note, the last Giants baseball game of the season is tomorrow. Record wise they are about where anyone would put them at the start of the season, bottom 5 of the MLB. But I think this season was more about seeing what kinda young talent was in the organization, and to my happiness it looks like the team is on more of a 2-3 year rebuilding process then the 4-5 it looked like coming into spring training.

The good news is hockey season is almost here. Go Sharks! Also, if the 49ers somehow pull off a win tomorrow, it will probably put them in a position that will make most of the rest of the season games mean something. Which would be a good thing.

So… after pulling that all-nighter and then getting about 4 hours of sleep on consecutive nights, I managed to catch up with 16.5 hours of sleep last night. LOL. Because I wasn’t able to sleep at all over the past few nights I took a TylenolPM before I crashed out, and I guess that combined with my exhaustion put me in to a minor coma. =)

Not much poker today, instead played a round of disc golf. I have been shooting awesome the last few days, tying my best round on one course and setting a new personal best on another. Still working on hitting the magic number 0, sooo close.

Also, I just discovered Hulu.com today on the net. It’s not the first TV video streaming site on the internet, plus I am already familiar with other days of downloading tv shows/movies, however I think it is really cool that a lot of the networks are starting putting their content out there for free. The TV execs seem smarter than their music industry counterparts, who managed to procrastinate long enough to lose huge portions of their core demographic to bitorrent/P2P sites.