(The smaller pictures are all thumbnails since they're massive, so if you want to see bigger just click on them)


Alright, here we go. I haven't posted to my blog since January, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I'll keep it as interesting as possible since I doubt anyone wants to read about all my fun tests and papers I've had at school over the last few months.

So back in January I was talking to one of my good poker buddies PJo336, just chatting it up as we usually do. He mentions something about how none of his IRL friends can make it out to a ski trip in VT with him and some of his family, so he invites me to come along. I snap this offer up since pjo+skiing sounds amazing.

I buy an arsenal of skiing clothes (jacket, pants, gloves, hat, goggles, everything that you can't rent), since I haven't been skiing since I was 10. I was hoping that when I got there my hockey playing would save me and give me some sort of idea of what to do on the mountain. I fly up to NYC to meet PJo and his dad, and we go to his family's house for the night before heading out to VT (Okemo Ski resort).

PJo driving:


View of the mountain:


View from the house:


On skiing; I had an amazing time. I felt like I wasn't doing it properly (I kept my body real low to the ground, and my knees very bent like I would in hockey), but it allowed me to go much faster without a fear of falling so I had fun doing it. The conditions on the mountain were amazing. It was cold, but snowing the whole time we were there. For living in southern VA and not seeing snow all year it was amazing to be getting this much snow in such a short period of time.

We skied a few green circles to get the hang of skiing the first day, and I did somewhat decent. I was really wobbly on the skis at first, but most of my issue was from going very slow or standing still, I rarely fell while actually skiing.

We went back in to take a break and I decided to take my camera with me to capture some of the awesome scenery that I saw as we were at the top of the mountain, but of course it started to snow heavily so our visibility was horrible and I didn't get those pictures.


We kept skiing for the remainder of our trip, I tried to grind some, but my computer BSOD'd on me and I was stuck computerless for most of the trip.

During the trip I did manage to go from skiing green circles to getting up to black diamonds, skiing almost every open non double black trail on the mountain (even skiing on one closed run).

Some more pictures from the trip, because pictures make blogs awesome:

Picture while near the base of the mountain:


My BSOD:


Another view from the house:


PJo while on the lift:


Me on the lift:


Cool icicles while leaving:



So all in all I had a freaking amazing time in VT.

In terms of poker I was continuing to have very marginal winning months at 400nl at this time, putting in 25-35k hands and only winning 5-9 BIs a month. So in February I decided to move down to 200nl and open my game up a lot and just crush and grind some lower variance money.

This was the result:




Since then I've been playing 100-200 and my game has just felt meh, I've tried various things to pick my game back up, but nothing seems to be working right now. I'll start getting back into the groove and then it feels like something breaks. But, I'm a very determined and competitive person, and I know from how I work I'm not giving up at all, but I'm going to keep grinding and improving my game until I become a bigger winner at the levels I play. Thinking about just nitting it up at 200 in the meantime and rebuilding my roll since it took quite a hit (I've had a breakeven and marginal winning month since feb).

During my Spring break I decided to go back down to SC and visit up with a bunch of 2+2ers I met back in December, and hang with them. Originally it was just going to be me Zak (kaz2107), and wade (dawade). Then I get a call from trevor (thac), saying he's coming down for sure, just booked his tickets, and if I can pick him up on my way down. Thac also brings his roommate Pete (millimeterpeter) with him. Kevin S (fopah) also decides last minute he's going to be coming in. Finally one of thac's roommates decides to drive down with his gf and friend, so now our tiny meet up just got pretty big, and pretty awesome. Of course all the guys that came that I already knew were awesome continued to be awesome, but the new guys I met there were also really cool guys (shout outs to fopah and pete, ldo).

While there I didn't play too much poker, but spent a lot of time helping pete work on his game, railing MTTs that others were in, and having a lot of discussions with thac (both poker and girl related). Drank quite a bit, partied a bit, and had all in all an amazing time.

I'll quote on of my posts from a while back just to demonstrate some of the shenanigans one night included ( I may have been intoxicated while writing this):

So yea, as you can probably tell, had an amazing time there. Some more pictures to make this post less wordy:

Wade drunk:


Zak's beerpong table with pete and wade in the background:


Me and pete (I had blonde hair that week because of hockey):


Wade making his classic face:


Some 13 year old that wouldn't leave us alone:



^^^Or that could be the leggo coach/2+2er; thac, never sure




Also from the trip, wade reenacting his face from when a slutty girl from the party told him during making out in his car they weren't going to have sex:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veWIMUZuojE


Completely looking forward to seeing these guys again in Turning Stone, and in Vegas.

Oh, and leave a comment if you actually got through reading this all, don't want to feel like I wrote this all for nothing.



-hockeyav