realized I need to write some goals down...which for me is the main benefit to blogging...i could do it on my own wordpad file, but i feel more committed to accomplishing them when the goals are put in the public sphere for my 'fans' to see and critique me on...

Tomorrow:
1) Have a decent breakfast and make it to corporate law class for 830est.
2) Read real estate notes so prepared for the class
3) Come home and nap
4) Equal Fifty50 time as evidence studying time

Weekly:
1) Really brush up on evidence class
2) Buy blender at store
3) Watch 'The Corporation' - recommended for class

Longer term:
1) Crush December exams
2) Read Mining Law textbook over xmas break
3) Win Dec. 18th sunday million
4) Have midnight bedtime next semester

Not really any poker goals. Guess it's not a priority of mine right now. Maybe in the summer if I can't get a summer job.

I really should be in bed because I have to wake up in 3.5 hours for class...

I just laughed a lot reading about my slacker life back in 2009. Man I did nothing. So I'm in my 2nd year of law school now, and just felt like posting here because I've started playing poker again.

I dabbled a bit on Stars with a very barebones roll over the past couple years. Went busto in September or so and figured I was done with poker. Need to focus on school.

Was bored last weekend and realized I had about 5,000 FPP. Played a bunch of sats for the $11 sunday storm and got about 7 entries. Unregged for T$ 77.

Lost most of it in 180 man's and other tourneys. With almost nothing left and no more fpp was in a $4 2R1A. did my rebuys and add-on and ended up coming 8th for $160.

Assumed I'd just donk that off, and probably still will, but I started playing the Fifty50's on stars. My buddy in school plays them, so I decided to try a couple $15 or $30 turbos out. They are pretty much coin flips, but i've managed to work my roll up to $800 now. this includes playing with extremely poor bankroll management and jumping in the $60 and $100 games as well.

i've having fun with it, but need to devote time to school work. exams are coming up. why must poker be so addicting?

just watched ep7 of Homeland. great show! claire danes is hot and i want to do her. oh ya, laughed about me trying to find a girl on a dating site from my previous posts...haha i've had a girlfriend for over a year now.

shocked at how much life has changed compared to my previous blog posts. also haven't had a drink yet in November. unless you count from midnight-2am on november 1. didn't feel like growing a stache this year for november, so am doing alcohol-free november and am donating $10 for every day i miss should i falter. it's been tricky, especially cause i sometimes i really want to have just 1 beer, but it hasn't been all that difficult. probably wont' drink till dec. 14th when exams are done.

cyaz

Well after last night's little temper tantrum I'm level headed again.

I ended up polishing off 1L of wine in bed while watching The Office and some documentary on Egypt. I got up around 10am today and hit the streets while the maids cleaned my room.

Just got home and it's nice and clean. Very refreshing and I'm definitely about to hit the tables.

The other weekend I was visiting my friend and we were drunk and both decided we'd get our motorcycle licenses. We made a $20 bet about who would get it first. He's not much of a gambler, and $20 is a pretty good sum. I probably would have gone up to any amount really since I have a big edge due to the fact I don't work, and he has a full-time job, and a girlfriend, that he has to manage his time with. Also the larger the bet, the more likely we'd take a course, and actually get it done. This way we are left to our own slacking devices. This bet is definitely more about the pride than the $ amount.

After I got breakfast today I walked into the DMV (department of motor vehicles). I asked to write the motorcycle knowledge test. I hadn't studied at all and didn't know anything about it. There were 40 questions, and I had to get 32 right to pass.

I ended up getting 32 out of 36, and the test stopped. Ship the learner's! Hahaha, this test was the biggest joke. I think I got every motorcycle specific question wrong. Counter-steering, bike shudder, wtf?!?!?! But the majority of the test was made up of general road signs, and common sense driving stuff, that anyone who's been driving for a while could easily pass. If I failed I was going to ask for the handbook which I think would have been pretty funny.

So now I have to buy a bike. The plan is to just go out there and learn on my own. Technically I'm supposed to have an instructor (someone over 19, with a motorcycle license) with me at all times, but I don't have any friends with bikes, so that's not going to happen. I'm just gonna cruise the streets by myself and hope to evade the coppers. The problem will be when I do my road test, because my "instructor" has to be present for that. When that time comes I'll have to find someone.

That's her for now. By the way my mom is not happy about this current choice. I told her it's either this or go back to Afghanistan, so she's settled on the bike license. Not that she really has any say.

adios

I'm so pissed off right now. I'm absolutely hating poker and not having much motivation to play. March has been super lame.

March 1st - Bankroll = $3600 - playing a mix of .25/.50 and .50/1

Cashout $1500 to pay some bills.

Play poker up until today. Some .50/1 but mostly .25/.50

Current bankroll = $930.

So my bankroll is 1/4 what it was at the start of the month. Granted I took out $1500, but I've still lost $1200.
Just looked at my stats actually.
Broken down it's:
-$259 at NL200 that I took a stab at on March 1st just before cash out. 112 hands
-$447 at NL100. 6000 hands.
-$404 at NL50. 8000 hands.
+$10 at NL25. 148 hands.

I'm just not motivated to play. Tired of grinding. The cashout curse got me again. I haven't cashed out in forever and now I do and hit a gayswing. I really tried to mentally prevent this from happening this time, but alas it was not the case.
I just deposited $68 that I had sitting in moneybookers to reactivate the pokerstars boomswitch. I wanted to curse at them but there was no comments field when making the deposit. I wish there was.

I've got 88522 hands in HEM since mid-december. I'm currently running $630 below $EV in HEM. Anyways poker is gay and depressing.

Life is pretty good. I've been working out lots. Eating somewhat well, hanging out with friends, watching hockey games, hitting on chics, and getting drunk. It's 330am and I just cracked a bottle of wine and am going to get drunk now. Talked to my hot ass friend I met in Australia and she is coming home in a week so I'm pretty stoked. I'm going to buy a vehicle this week I think. I've been getting around town on my bike, which hasn't been bad, but it's pretty weak not to have a vehicle. So I'm probably going to put about $5000 towards a truck.

I'm going away next week with the army for a one week excercise in some ****ty, desolate, remote area. Usually I'm not so keen on these excercises in the cold canadian winter, but I'm looking forward to this one since it should be a good break from the grind, and also cause I haven't really been in the field since Afghanistan in August 2007.

That's when I got back from 6 months in that ****hole country. I promptly took a 6-month leave, which is the max allotable time from the army, and proceeded to be gone for 13 months. I had to return because they were going to kick me out, but they let me vastly over extend my alloted leave cause I could easily claim PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)

I'm trying to think what I want to do. I was thinking I was going to play poker for the next little while, get some good cash and then who knows. But right now that's not even fun. Grinding NL100 sucks, let alone NL50.

I've thought about going to Japan to teach, and do Japanese girls. And eat sushi and drink ridiculous amounts of sake.

I also might get a vehicle and just drive somewhere. Right now I'm thinking Montreal.

Hopefully the next update is better. I'm going to get drunk and watch last week's episode of the office.

p.s. oh ya, i live in a hotel, and tomorrow is the day i get my room cleaned. the maids usually come around 11am when i'm completely dead to the world passed out on top of all my clothes. earlier today i thought i'd try to be out of the place around 10, but clearly that's not going to happen. i don't know what they think of me. but i gave the little filipino ***** $5 last week so she should be happy.

Well I finally had a significant night at the tables. I played 2600 hands and was up roughly 7 buy-ins when all was said and done.

This includes losing 44 < 77 on QQ742 for a 240bb pot, and losing AA < 88 on Q8Ax8 for a 200bb pot. I was starting to get tired and planned on finishing up shortly. The 44 hand happened and I sort of laughed about it and shrugged it off. I had been running like the sun earlier in the session so was due for something bad to happen. A couple seconds later I got AA on another table, and said to myself if I lose this hand I'm done. I fist pumped a little too early when we got it in on the rainbow flop.

Oh well. I'm happy with the session overall. I'm excited to be playing some more. At the end of the session my roll was almost up to the point where I felt I could comfortably take some shots at 1/2. Then I looked at my bank account...
I had 2k on my credit card. 1k of that was from depositing on Stars to take advantage of their 25% bonus recently. Since I actually haven't made a cash out in a long time, and I'm not really working right now, I decided I'd cash out enough to pay off the whole balance. Time to grind it back up!!! Hopefully the cash out curse doesn't hit me!

I'm currently operating on 2 Dell 2001FP monitors. I've been 8-tabling but am starting to find it a little slow. I definitely feel I could 12-table, but want some more real estate on my monitor. I hate when the tables are really small. I might look into getting a new monitor in the near future. It would add greatly to my hourly if I could 12-table and right now cash is king to me.

I feel I've really improved since joining Leggo. I enjoy the videos, and I'm doing really well at the tables. I have nearly 76,000 hands since December. I'll post my graph once I reach 100,000. I'd like to be at 1/2 by the end of March. That's my goal right now. To get there I'm really going to have to focus on playing lots, and constantly improving.

I was just away for 3 days visiting friends. It was an out and out gong show. Got blackout drunk till 8am the first night, went golfing, and went to a Brad Paisley concert. We got hooked up with box seats through the army. Ya, I like country music. The concert was pretty good, but the friends I was with weren't into it which kind of sucked. They just came along because we got free tickets. It would have been much better with people that were into it. And because we were in this box, there was no one we could interact with. There were tons of hotties around. So many. We couldn't get anyone into the box with us, because there was some ***** at the door, that wouldn't let anyone in even if we invited them. Gay ruiner of fun.

It's 715am. I need to get to bed. I need to get back in a workout routine. I was doing well for a while but I fell off that wagon. I need a good workout tomorrow and good eats. I'm going to a gansta themed party tomorrow night. I'll probably end up getting smashed so won't be playing cards tomorrow. I really want to, but I think a good balance in social life is important. It sucks that Friday and Saturday are the fishiest nights at the table but also really the only nights to get together with most of my friends that work regular jobs.

I feel like I'm just going on about nothing. I'll get some good stories up soon. Hopefully something blog-worthy goes down at this party tomorrow night. I need to find some gangsta clothes tomorrow, maybe some grillz too.

peace

Man, I've been terrible about updating my blog.

I'm just about to start a session. I'm going to start off with .25/.50 and likely incorporate some .50/1 if things go well. That's what I did yesterday and it worked out very well.

I'm basically posting now to commit myself to post later tonight. That is my commitment. I've been really busy playing stupid werewolf games on 2p2 and not doing much productive.

I just paid rent yesterday, so that's some more incentive to hit the tables hard. I've been on a ton of waitlists for like 5 minutes now, and nothing has opened up. Kind of weird.

I'm going to really focus on cbetting/2barreling and also picking off opponent's 2 barrels today. I'm also going to really focus on table/seat selection. I've been at some really good tables the past few days, and it's just amazing how big of a difference this makes. There's so many tables at these stakes that there's no reason to be playing in unideal spots.

First table just came up. There's a 40bb to my right, and a 160bb to my left. It's only 3 handed, and I have no stats. Not the ideal spot right now but I'll stick with it and see how they are, at least until I get some other tables up.

I'll post more later. Cheers.

Well I totally blow at poker. I just can't focus, and don't even try to focus. I get way too preoccupied doing other things. I barely played over the weekend because I was busy with other things, but today was a waste of time. I played some tournaments I wasn't rolled for, and then I played some cash in a complete haze.

I decided to 4-table to try to focus on the tables, but then I'd just open up the internet my other monitor and go on facebook, play stupid games on 2p2, and do other pointless stuff.

Next time I play poker I'm turning off my 2nd monitor. I've also decided I'm not going to play until I watch at least 5 videos, and make a serious bankroll plan. I love tournaments, but I don't think I'm profitable in them. I mean all it takes is one big score, and I've got close, but I always seem to fall just short. I think I'll make some sort of tournament schedule that I'll stick to. Or reward myself by allowing me to play in x buy-in tournament given that I do y amount of hands. Either way, I need to figure out a bankroll plan and stick to it. Even if it's not super strict, I need some sort of guideline, because right now I'm all over the place.

I think I need to workout or run first thing in the morning. This should get me feeling good for the rest of the day and feel mentally alert rather than in a daze all day. Today I woke up and was in my pajamas the entire day until 930pm when my friend called and we went out for a pint. I even blew off some chic that I met on the dating site I mentioned in my previous post because I felt like crap and didn't want to meet her for the first time in such a state of disarray. I told her I was taking care of my little cousins tonight, lol.

She looks smoking hot though and we're going to go out tomorrow. I don't know what we'll do yet, but hopefully it's fun. I haven't gone out on a date in a while. I'd say I'm about 70% excited, 30% anxious. Here's a pic of her, she's hot.


I put a video up in Members Videos section of the forums. It's about 45 minutes of me playing 50NL at Stars. There's no commentary because I don't have a mic, and I was hoping to have it reviewed by Probability, and he had requested no audio. It's 339mb which someone mentioned was too big a file and I needed to downsize it, but I didn't know how to do that. The video quality is quite good. Here's a link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5GFCUXG6

I'll report on my weekend charity game, my home game, and the date in my next update.

Stay classy

Today was a pretty lazy day. I woke up at 11am which I was pretty stoked about because I haven't been up that early in a while. Part of that was because last night I was absolutely exhausted and got to sleep before 2. I don't know why I was so tired. In fact I've had a general feeling of tiredness for a while now. Today was no exception. I'm fairly active so I don't think it's that. Right now I'm thinking it's my diet (or lack thereof) so I'm definitely going to be looking at eating better/more/at all. I could probably easily go 2 days without eating just out of laziness. Often I find a glass of orange juice or water will tide me over. Coffee in the morning is also must. I had a huge plate of spaghetti for dinner tonight about 2 hours ago with a good meat sauce, but right now I'm starving again, but can easily ignore those stomach pangs as I write this. I don't really have much other food to cook up right now and don't feel like going anywhere at 11pm. Well now that that problem is identified, let's check in on my goals from the other day.

1) Wake up by noon.
2) Have a good breakfast Coffee, bagel&cream cheese, 3 scrambled eggs
3) Work out Good hour long chest/tricep workout
4) Get a haircut and sort out driver's license renewal Pretty sharp looking cut, and got my DL back
5) Get some groceries+protein powder I did this, but I did a very weak grocery shop. Need to go again
6) Get birthday present for Dad I know what I'm getting. I looked a bit online, shouldn't be an issue.
7) Speak with friend in Australia Time zone complications made this a bit of an issue, and she was working, but we had a few texts and will talk soon.
8) Complete profile on dating site - I feel like going out on date's with girls again, and am sick of trying to meet people at the bar. I've been meaning to try this internet dating thing out for a while, but have never got around to making a profile I have to do this tonight.
9) Watch one poker video This was such an easy goal. I did this, but feel like I should have done much more
10) Update this blog at the end of the day to track progress. Well I didn't do this yesterday basically because I passed out, but I feel doing it now is acceptable.

So I got most of what I wanted to do done. Not that any of it was hard at all. Yesterday was sort of a maintenance day. Today was sort of a waste of a day, and I partially blame that on myself for not setting any goals for myself. I was in the army for 6 years, and used to routine, and basically I feel when I'm not told to do something, I just do nothing, because you need to take advantage of your down time. Perhaps I'll share some war stories from Afghanistan in a future post.

So today I did manage to get a 45 minute back/bicep workout in. I also got Camtasia and recorded a 45 minute session 4-tabling 50NL. The internet at the hotel I'm currently living in is god awful and upload speed is about 10kb/s so I'm going to have to upload it at a friend's place.
I also 8-tabled 50NL for about an hour and a half and ended up down 1/2BI. I think I was playing alright. Never really got in any interesting spots. I think a few times I made a turn bet when I picked up either a straight draw or flush draw, and then got blown off it by a raise. Not sure if that was the best time to attempt to barrel.

There was one good spot on the video I made where I had AK and EP minraised, I reraised, button called, EP called.

Flop came Q68

EP shoved for $3.75. Pot was now $18.75. Button had $37.70 and I covered. I thought about raising but didn't really see the point since there was no sidepot and I was going to have to hit a hand to win the main pot anyways. I'm almost always raising FD+overs but because EP was all-in I wasn't sure what to do. Well, I called, button shoved, and now it's $33.95 to me with $60.20 in the middle. I pump fist snap call and lose to aces. I just found that hand interesting, results aside.

I gotta plan my day for tomorrow. I'm liking this 11am wakeup so I'll do that again. Maybe earlier if I can.

1) Wakeup by 11am
2) Have a good breakfast
3) Watch a video
4) Play for 2 hours, 4-tables ONLY! When I'm trying to improve I need to cut back on the number of tables so I can really focus and get better. I think that's been one of my main problems at getting better is I just grind, but improve. Post at least 3 hands.
5) Workout
6) Have a good late lunch

I'm going to a hockey game with my friends after so I'm not sure where the night will take me. I guess my last goal is

7) Don't come home drunk and play cards

----------------------

For tonight I'm going to get that dating profile up, watch Lost (so excited!!!!), and then watch a video or two.

P.S. Almost forgot. I got banned from 2p2 this afternoon. Someone was asking about AR15's (assault rifles) and I remembered some lyrics from 50 Cent - Wanksta. I looked them up and copied this verse in the thread:

**NWord** sayin' they gonna murder 50, how?
We ridin 'round with guns the size of Lil Bow Wow
What you know about AK's and AR 15's?
Equipped with night vision, shell catchers and
IR beams, huh

I didn't even write the n word. I asterisked out half of it, but that got me banned for racism. Ludacris.

G'night all.

Hey guys/girls,

I'll quickly introduce myself. I'm a 27 year old Canadian guy looking to get serious about poker. I have played quite a fair bit over the last 4 years, but have never made it to that next level. This is my 2nd attempt at a poker blog. I created one in December, but I don't even know where to find it.

I feel the main reason I haven't been able to improve and succeed as much as I'd like to is due to lack of focus and goals. My first year of playing online I was really into it. I only made strategy posts on 2p2, I read tons of books, and I really tried at the tables.

Now I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I don't make any strategy posts, I don't read any books, and I don't focus at the tables. I usually 6-8 table while browsing the internet.

I haven't set any goals yet, and right now I have terrible bankroll management. This all needs to change ASAP.

In terms of bankroll management I feel one problem is that at the level I'm capable of beating right now, 50NL, the value of money seems completely worthless. I often find myself sticking in a full buy-in stack because I don't really care about $50.

On Saturday night I got extremely drunk and decided it was a good idea to bet $500 on Federer to win the Aussie Open. Of course he didn't. I've never bet more than $100 on a sporting match before, and $10 is my 'usual' bet. I say usual, but I don't usually bet on sports. The worst part about it was for the 1st and 2nd set it was the best thing I'd ever seen. My adrenaline was pumping, and I was absolutely loving it. Then I passed out. I couldn't stay up any longer. I'd already been awake about 24 hours, had a long day of snowboarding, was ****faced, and just couldn't do it. So I woke up the next day, vaguely remembered making this bet, and disgustingly realized I lost. Oops. My friends thought I was total degen. I gladly would have lost $100 if I stayed up and watched it, but losing $500 to pass out in the 2nd set is beyond stupid.

Back to poker. At this point in my career I think I have a pretty good grasp of 1st level thinking. Playing my own cards. I can do that fairly well. I may make some out of line bluffs once in a while, but nothing too terrible. The majority of my stats are in line with solid winners according the HEM's Plugging the Leaks, however I'm not winning as much as I could.

This is because: 1) I'm not developing good reads on players; 2) I'm not adapting well and using these reads to make correct plays.

I'm just not focused enough at the tables. I also haven't been studying nearly enough, if at all. And I haven't felt all that healthy. So I've created this blog to write down my goals, and follow my progress. Also by coming here to do my blog, I'll also be able to read other blogs to give me motivation to succeed. I don't really want to do anything else right now. I love the lifestyle that being a poker player offers, and I know I can succeed given enough work.

A lot of my goals are just simple life goals. I've been extremely lazy in the couple months, and feel just having a better mindset altogether will drastically improve my poker game.

TOMORROW - I probably won't be doing much poker stuff tomorrow because I have other things to take care of and I volunteer from 7-10pm.

1) Wake up by noon.
2) Have a good breakfast
3) Work out
4) Get a haircut and sort out driver's license renewal
5) Get some groceries+protein powder
6) Get birthday present for Dad
7) Speak with friend in Australia
8) Complete profile on dating site - I feel like going out on date's with girls again, and am sick of trying to meet people at the bar. I've been meaning to try this internet dating thing out for a while, but have never got around to making a profile
9) Watch one poker video
10) Update this blog at the end of the day to track progress

That is a pretty easy list for tomorrow. I was going to put some short term/monthly goals but I'll leave those for tomorrow. Baby steps.

I'm looking forward to doing this blog. It's not only going to be poker related. In fact I'm sure I have lots of retarded drunken stories to share. One of my future goals will probably be to drink less, but I'm not ready to write that down yet and unsure how I'd enforce it. Whatever I write down here I must accomplish or at least make a damn hard effort trying.

Not too exciting, but right now this blog is for me. Once I deal with my personal stuff, then the blog will be more for the fans...hopefully I have some!!!


Chris