Website Launch and Turning Stone Trip Report

As you can see my blog has a totally new website address and design thanks to Sean “icemonkey9″ Gibson.  I really like the new look and am really appreciative of him setting this up for me.  I wanted my site to look more professional and wanted to focus on getting some new students, so I thought a website like this would help me out a ton.  I had to think of a cool name for my site, so I thought to myself “hmm, what is it that I do really?”  Then I remembered that I totally crush online poker games and decided to name the blog accordingly.  I haven’t really been up to much since my last update, but strangely, I do have some stuff to report on.

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