Alright, poker is boring, now on to the more interesting stuff.  Its getting really close to one of my favorite times of the year, March Madness.  I absolutely love the NCAA tournament and will probably be spending most of my free time the next few days filling out brackets.  I usually try to get into as many different brackets as I can.  Im currently in one at 2+2 for $100 and I always do a couple for my Dad’s work for $10 a pop.  I am never that good at picking the brackets, but its still really fun and gives you a reason to watch all the games so I enjoy making them a lot.  Hopefully I can find a few more to get into.  Also, speaking of basketball, my home team got a #1 seed this year and I am really pumped for that.  They lost their last 2 games of the season, but I think that will only add fuel to their fire and hopefully they can go out and win it all.  Lets go Cuse!

The worst part about the whole ordeal is not losing the money.  $7000 is not that much in the grand scheme of things and to be honest its really not that big of a deal.  The bigger dilemma here is that when you run as bad as this for a sustained period like I have you start to doubt your own abilities and you lose all confidence in your ability to beat the games.  This is extremely damaging for your game and can take months to correct.  I have been questioning my own decisions lately a ton more than I ever have in the past.  Decisions that used to be really automatic are now becoming huge question marks in my head.  I am almost ashamed to say that I have totally lost all confidence in my game and question whether I am still a winner constantly.  I know its totally irrational to think this way, but it still pops up in my head nearly every time I play now.  I have come to now expect to lose every time I sit down instead of win.  This is all really really bad for a poker player.

Its hard to explain how a downswing can affect you to anyone who doesn’t player poker on a professional level.  It really takes a huge toll on your psychological state and causes an insane amount of stress.  Imagine working for a week at your job and then having money removed from your bank account for the job you did.  Thats the best analogy I can come up with at the moment.  Anyways, I will eventually start running good again and I will have won all the money I lost back.  Hopefully it comes sooner rather than later.  For now, I think I need to finally take about a dozen different people’s advice and take an extended break for a bit.  Get my head screwed back on straight and just go back to doing what I do best, which unfortunately for the ladies, is not sex.

Anyways, heres my abysmal graph

On another note, ever since I read the PTR article on best places to live and play poker, Ive been researching the island of Malta off the coast of Italy.  Looks like a sweet place and definitely want to take a vacation there at some point in the near future.  Might actually consider moving there if I end up liking it and continue to play poker for a living since you don’t have to pay taxes on gambling winnings there.  It would be pretty amazing to be able to actually keep 100% of the money I make.  Ive been looking over my tax situation for last year, and it looks like I am going to end up having to send the IRS a check for $20k+ in April and that sucks big time.  I had no idea how much of your income actually goes directly to the government until now.  It also sucks when they don’t take money weekly and you are just hit with a huge bill at the end of each year.  Anyways, if anyone wants to take a trip to Malta with me, let me know.  I’m down to go whenever.  I looked at some houses for weekly rentals and they were cheaper than I thought they were gonna be.  Couple really nice ones for around $700/week.

Anyways, I gotta get going so I will stop boring you to death with lines of text.  Hear is my profits graph for this month.  The blue line includes rakeback, live play, and PLO/PL 5 card draw play.  All in all I played about 90 hours which is pretty good for me.  Gonna try to put in around the same volume next month.

I went to the Turning Stone Casino this past weekend to play in some tournaments and some cash games during their big Winter Poker Meltdown tournament series.  I made the 45 minute trek there on Thursday evening and started out just playing some $2/$5 NL cash games.  The game was actually the toughest live $2/$5 game I have ever played and ended up spewing terribly out of boredom and lost about $1100 the first night.  Great start to the trip, lol.  After donking off $1100 I decided to hit up the sports bar for a couple drinks before I went to bed.  I ended up meeting 3 tournament players at the bar and I just stayed there and drank and talked to them til about 2am.  All three of them were cool guys and it was cool to talk to them considering I had never really met any professional tournament players before.  At 2am I was a little drunk and just ended up going back to my room and passing out.  At 11am the next morning I registered for a $500 6max tournament.  Unfortunately only 47 other people registered so it wasnt a large field and first place was only worth around $7000.  I ended up trying a bluff against the worst player at my table when he had a nut flush and then shoved KQ into AK as a squeeze for my last 12 blinds or so.  Wasn’t really thrilled with how I played, but whatever, it was the first live tournament Ive ever played in.  About 2 hours after i busted I decided to play in a $215 deepstacked turbo tournament.  I was playing really well in this one and had about 3x the average chipstack at one point, but then of course, boredom set in about 4 hours into the tourney.  Ended up bluffing off all my chips to the only person at my table that had me covered.  This usually happens to me when I play live.  Since I started playing poker online, I am used to really fast paced hands and being able to play a ton of hands/hour.  Playing live I just have to sit there and fold, fold, fold, fold over and over again and it just gets so boring that I usually end up playing stupid, trying to force action.

Anyways, so now  Im down about $2k on the trip and am feeling kind of shitty, but I knew that this was a possibility before I left, so I wasn’t too bummed.  Decided to head over to the sports bar again.  There was some NBA game on that I was watching and I had a few gin and tonics and mostly just talked with the bar tender since I was one of the only people in the bar at that time.  She was a nice older lady who hooked me up with a couple free drinks and I actually enjoyed talking to her for awhile.  Then she left and a smoking hot girl my age started working behind the bar.  Of course, being a few drinks in at this point I tried my best to charm her, but failed.  She already had a boyfriend that was a poker player and was basically bitching about poker the whole time.  I had a lot more fun talking to the older lady to be honest.  At around 9:30pm one of my buddies from home came up to visit me and we ended up playing $1/$2 NL cash games for a few hours before hitting up the diner and then crashing.  I think I ended up winning like $100 that night from $1/$2.

Next day I woke up and felt pretty shitty since I drank pretty heavily the two nights before.  My mom was actually on her way back home from a business trip in Utica and met me for lunch.  After lunch I went and decided Id give it one last shot at $2/$5 NL.  Ended up winning ~$1000 and then quit, being happy with only being down around $1000 for the whole trip.  I decided to pack it in and head for home shortly after.  Stopped at Best Buy on the way home and picked up seasons 1 and 2 of Burn Notice and will be watching those in the near future.

Since the casino, Im up a bunch online to well cover my losses from the casino, so it wasn’t a big deal at all losing a little bit at the casino to have a little fun for a weekend.  And on that note I will not shut this blog post down and leave you in suspense until next week when I post my month graph for everyone.

Later

I ended up buying a really sweet watch a few days ago that I really like. Its a TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Calibre 6 with a white face and a silver band. It was a bit pricey, but I decided that since I have been doing so well lately I would treat myself to something nice. The thought of purchasing it was actually what motivated me to get in as much hands as I did this week.

Unfortunately, I have not started my workout regimen yet as I am still a completely lazy bum and lack motivation to do just about anything lately, but will be calling up the gym on Monday and getting my membership. My buddy who is going to train me has also been tied up this past week, so hopefully he will be free this week.

Other than that, my life is boring and I have not much else to report. Thanks for reading and gl at the tables.

The New Desk

Alternate View of the Desk

Yea, pretty baller, i know.

Next, one of my friends just got certified as a personal trainer, so Im gonna help him out a little by giving him some business as I’ve been meaning to get into better shape for awhile and he will help me to stay motivated. Hopefully I can start working out 4 times a week again like I used to in college and just become a more healthy individual again. Planning on eating a lot better too.

As for poker, its been going great this year so far. On a nice little heater of sorts even though technically I am like $2k below EV. Obviously Im not complaining though. Ive run good in other spots. Ive mostly been playing 100 and 200NL 6max and HU, but recently I started fooling around playing 200, 400, and 600NL FR with some pretty decent results so far. I kinda of like the change of pace that FR gives me and it allows me to grind hands and VPPs which I cant really do playing HU. Anyways, here it is. Be jealous.

This Year So Far