what an epic crushing by spurs. defoe and lennon were sensational. the free kick by bentley was a beauty as well. hopefully we can keep this form against villa and later on against the big 4.

I really haven't been posting for the last couple months. Poker in general kind of fell off the map for me at the end of summer. I just felt bored and had other interests, but now I need to get back into it. I played sporadically last month and won a bit, so its going pretty good. Im going to attempt to update this like once a week at least, and maybe put something worthwhile in it someday.

Today was the first day I really sat down and decided to grind. Recently its just been sporadic sessions here and there. I logged 2.5k hands and won like 7 bi. I think PTR says thats my biggest day ever lol. Kinda sad but I guess I never really play more than 2k or so hands in a day (and usually only 1k).

Im a bit undecided about what I want to do in the near future. With the legislation being so hazy and the future of online poker being somewhat unclear, I am considering cashing out a decent chunk just in case something bad happens. However, I would really like to move up soon. I guess (grogs favorite phrase ftw) I will just have to keep trying to find out whats really going on and make a decision in the next few weeks.

Oh and here's a picture I painted myself...


Peace

Well I really haven't played much at all since sometime in July. I just got bored and distracted with other stuff, so I didn't really feel like playing through a downswing or b/e or whatever was going on at the time. Now I can honestly say that I am about as focused as I have ever been on poker and have found the motivation to play some volume. I also made some tweaks in my game that I think are going to make me win 1-2 ptbb more so Im excited to see how that works out. I missed the first week or so this month and have a quite a bit of work w/ college so I would be happy to get 25k hands in before halloween comes around.

On another note, when I take a break from playing, even if its only a month or two, I usually seem to find that the play has changed slightly (better typically). This time I don't notice that at all. Maybe the level of play is leveling out in ssnl or maybe its just random variance or poor observation on my part, but Im optimistic I can gain some ground on the competition in the near future.

So I got back from Indy a week ago but haven't taken the time to blog since. I really liked it there. The weather is really nice this time of the year and the city has just enough to keep it interesting but not so much that its a giant clusterfuck. We stayed downtown, directly across the street from the capitol building. There was plenty of restaurants/entertainment within walking distance so it worked out well. We went to the Indianapolis Tennis Championships on Tuesday which was pretty fun. The tournament used to be rather tough, but it has fallen off, especially this year due to the atp's restructuring. Basically, the event isn't worth very much anymore. We didn't see a whole lot of good players but it was entertaining nonetheless. Here is a quick shot i took of the stadium court + downtown in the background.

We planned on going back on Wednesday but it drizzled basically all day so it was a wash. Naturally some random spending and wasting time occurred instead. Thursday was mostly just walking around seeing various landmarks like Conseco Fieldhouse and Lucas Oil Stadium, which is fucking massive btw. We flew back that night and the travel was pretty tiring.

Poker wise, not much has happened. I just haven't had the desire to play and I don't feel like pushing myself really. I played some 6 max sngs for fun on stars for a couple days, but today was my first day returning to 100nl 6max. Hopefully I can find some time/desire and get some hands in soon. FTP randomly came up with another bonus, so I now have another 200 to clear on top of the 200 I'm just about to finish clearing. Not sure why they bother honestly, but free money is free money.

Well I decided to play some early sundays today but I ended up just tanking in several of them after busting my two biggest tournys early cuz KK<AA and QQ<KK in first two levels with an AA<QQ shortly after is pretty much guaranteed on sunday. Pretty much cancelled out the money I won yesterday with a 9th in the 27.5 turbo on stars which was rather dissapointing considering first was 4.8k and its just a huge crapshoot at the end. Luckily I will get a little break this week. Im flying to Indy tomorrow to pretty much just do whatever there is to do. I know Im going to the ATP tennis tourny there this week so that might be entertaining. I only maintained focus for like 2 weeks this summer. Im not sure I could handle this poker shit full time, so Im glad its still an unlikely fallback plan if I can't take working in the real world. gl, and perhaps I will update w/ photos and a TR from Indy if I feel like it.

So I basically haven't played at all this week. After making a quick 2.5-3k in mtts last week I managed to get in a few thousand hands of cash where obv I broke even. I feel like I have been breaking even since the start of june. I know the # of hands isn't that absurd for a BE stretch but its just hard to get into the grindmode when you barely remember winning a steady 4-5ptbb/100 cuz it was 2 months ago or more. Other than that I played about 10-15 mtts one day with an incredibly awesome 1 cash. Going out of town to Indy Monday, so perhaps I will get some mtt/cash/random other play in when I get back to OK.

So I haven't put in much volume this month, with only about 6k hands at 100nl and 4-5 bi profit. After last weeks mtt success I decided to give it another go and played like 9 tournys, including 10fos, 10rs, 50fos, and the big doubles on ftp. I cashed the stars 10r for some small amount and managed to get another tilting 25th out of 2000+ in a 10fo for 50 bucks but luckily I ft'ed one of the big doubles. I shortstacked it a while and played pretty poorly cuz there were 3 people just nitting it up so hard that it was obvious that just avoiding marginal spots and waiting for them to cripple themselves would be profitable. After we got 6 handed play slowed down a ton and I went on a roller coaster that took me down to like 7 bbs and then to chip lead 4 hands later. One guy was a random spazz monkey who hated folding and made some pretty awful plays so after he busted in fourth it was just myself and two reasonably competent players. They got into a big cooler spot w/ QQ vs JJ and I got to HU 2:1 down. It took about 5 hands iirc. I ran a pretty big bluff after flatting his button open cuz I thought I could rep a pretty strong hand since I was usually just folding or 3betting a polarized range the whole final table. Unfortunately he had something huge and I ended up getting outchipped like 5:1 before busting in a spot where we both flopped bottom pair and I picked up an oesd on the turn and we both tripped up on the river (obviously had to happen) and I got outkicked in second for 1700. Overall I made about 1450 on the session so I am pretty pleased. Reviewing my logs for the year makes me reconsider my current breakdown of about 85% cash 15% mtt. I have made roughly 10k in cash this year and 11-12k in mtts even though I have only played them a total of 20 days at most. Obviously I am running hotter than the sun in them but even if I won half as much it would still be a really solid amount for the time put in.

This year my mtt profits have come from
3rd in stars 10r for 6.3k
1st in ftp iron man for 2.25k
3rd in 26ko on ftp for 1.7k
2nd in 75fo big double on ftp for 1.7k
4th in ftp 10r for 1.35k
4th in 26ko on ftp for 1.2k

I think I could easily put in as much volume as I have this entire year in about 2-3 weeks if I could commit to doing it. I feel like I won't do it in the end though. I just hate having to play 6+ hour sessions on the regular and never being able to take adequate breaks. Oh well...

The last 5 weeks or so have really sucked as far as poker is concerned. I feel like I am getting trounced by setups and general run bad in 6max so I have decided to take a few days off from that to dabble in some other forms of poker in order to avoid that kinge niche like feeling of being a rat trapped in a vat of tears waiting to drown. I really would like to grind 180s for a bit to see what they are like. There is like a 0% chance that they will continue to be a big part of my play though. They just don't run enough above the 12 dollar level so even a sick hourly in them would not be that high unless you can megatable the shit out of them which I am fairly confident i cannot. I have run poorly to start in those but I mixed in some mtts today. Not a lot but the fifty fifty on ftp, 70k on stars, and the 10rs on both and maybe another random freezeout or two. I ran super hot and booked a good win but I still feel like I left some money on the table. I made it deep in the fifty fifty playing like a nit, just plain bad at times really. I ended up sucking out to get back in it and then eventually shoved AK utg for like 11 bb and got snap reshipped by utg+1 w/ KQcc. Qxxcc flop ldo so gg in 28th. The 10r on ftp went much better, and I FT'ed it coming in short but managed to get really lucky a couple of times before busting out in 4th when I reshipped A5 over a CO open and got called by his A8 and blanked. Overall I made about 1200-1300 today so I can't complain. Maybe this is the light at the end of the tunnel and I will be headed back in the right direction for July.


p.s.
A main event horse going deep wouldn't hurt either

The Hewitt-Roddick match tilted me so hard I almost can't believe it. I have always been a huge Hewitt fan (he basically succeeded Rafter as my favorite player back around 2000-2001). Never again does he choke so bad in the third and somehow, miraculously, comes back in the fourth just to drop the fifth. I pretty much hate Roddick as a player, but I will say that he has improved considerably. He can actually cover some court now and his backhand is 10x better than back in his early days. Im just praying for a Fed-Murray final, as that will be sick and I would not be displeased if either of them won. As for the women's, well who cares. Somebody should make a screename spin off of Ike with luvthewta because its almost as pathetic.

...and I could not possibly be more ready. June was the most trying month of poker I have faced probably. I expected to put in a high volume, live and online, but came up full of fail online. Live I made a pretty small profit for the time invested which is pretty sickening considering its LOLivepoker. I managed to make a grand total of 97 dollars on the month, my worst month since I started actually caring about online poker. Staking has gone rather poorly, and I think I was probably about -1k on from that. I should not be too upset about it though, I haven't lost anything but time and I have two years of college left to see where poker takes me. Perhaps I will return to more sane stats in the future. I drifted too far into the LAG range too quickly. I feel like I am not at my best when I go past 26/20 or so.So far in the first few hours of July I am already up more in online cash than last month, so here's to July, my return to the steady grind (I hope).