Hey guys! My last update was without some flava, so this time I'll try to make it a little more entertaining to read. I'm still working on my book and on getting better at poker and I feel like both are progressing very well. I went to see my brother in Fayetteville at Ft. Brag before he ships off to Haiti to do some humanitarian work for the next few months, so I had an opportunity to grind a lot of the math that I was dreading. IDK why, I think road trips, even if you're driving, and pooping are the best times to think. The shower is good, too, but that's a retarded time to try to play or to do work if you ask me (you know who you are!).

Here's a picture of Fayetteville:

There are basically a million lifeless looking places like this all around the town. There's a place called Red Point climbing, which I've talked a bit about in another entry that's a pretty solid climbing / MMA / crossfit gym that we go to almost every time we visit Matt (bro). Otherwise, we get some solid family time and do a routine of seeing a movie, going to Barnes and Nobles, then going out to dinner. It's really great my entire family could come out for this trip, especially since we won't see Matt for quite a while now. He was going to be deployed to Afghanistan, so at least he'll be a bit safer. No aids one time!

Before we left, he gave me a copy of Darksiders:

In this game, you're one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse and you're framed for trying to end the world. So basically heaven and hell are very mad at you, so everyone tries to kill you, but then you kill them. Some of the moves sounded freaking awesome and it's been a while since I played a game like this. With my new 7.1 surround sound cranked, it should be pretty freaking epic. My bro was telling me that every boss takes up at least a third of the screen! lol.


Today, I woke up at 630am, ate breakfast, went to the gym, and studied some poker so far. I'm now catching up on the episodes of 24 that I passed out during last night (sorry Jon). My friend came over and I immediately passed out because now I'm on successful people / old man sleeping schedule, which will hopefully end soon! I mean, there aren't really any games running and I've already done almost everything I want to do for the day by 830am (yes, I'm aware that's two hours).

I'm going to be starting a few more pods of group coaching soon. I'll make a blog post about it soon, but for those of you who need a few buy ins for it, start saving! The lessons will likely start up in the next few weeks, I'm going to take some time to tweak the format depending on what my last two groups say and I've already gotten a few great ideas for things. I feel like I've broken into 2knl and that I'm a solid winner in the game now, so like I said, the next step is 5knl. I'm ultra excited because I could play 5knl (and win obv) for the rest of my career and be very happy about it. It's basically the limit I've been working to play at since I started. Obviously, after beating that game for a while, I'm going to want to move up! For now, I feel like it's a very attainable goal that I've had for myself for a long time and one that I think a lot of people felt like I wouldn't accomplish.

It's just very great to know what I need to work on to improve in poker now. I'm remember IMing Aaron months ago and telling him I'd hit a wall. He gave me some great advice about improving to which I listened and on which I acted. All seems to be going well in the poker world and I have as much work as I want from it when I want.

Like I said, I hit the gym early the morning. Although, I do not plan to make it a regular early morning deal (two a days praps?), I do plan on putting on at least 10 pounds of muscle in the next few months. I'll be around town, other than the occasional snowboarding trip, so I'm excited that my schedule will finally allow some commitment to a lifting program.

I guess the theme to this entry is that I feel like I'm doing great with a lot of things and that I know I can do even better with a lot of work that I'm excited to do. It's going to be a grind and it's not going to be easy. If it were, I guess everyone would be beating high stakes.

GL guys, you'll hear from me soon about coaching! (individual lessons are almost always available though, so PM me before I raise my rate!)

-Reid