Just got into town today. Staying till Sunday. Really not sure which tournaments I'm playing but happy to be back in Chicago where I used to live. PM me if youre in town and want to meet up at the Horseshoe.

Full blog post coming soon. A lot of interesting life developments. As far as poker, nothing too interesting, I moved up to 400NL and got boned on a bunch of coinflips, gotta check the total for February but I think -3k or so. Sucksss, but hopefully will ship something at the Horseshoe to get March started off well!

P.S. Best part of being back in Chicago is the food. I can't wait to get some deep dish/Chicago style hot dog/Italian beef/Maxwell St. polish. So many great Chicago foods, gotta love it.

I'm thinking of going to this. The 1k HU tourney with the Porsche overlay looks awesome, and I used to live in Chicago so would be nice to go visit friends up there. If anyone's going and would like to split a hotel in downtown Chicago let me know--I'm not for certain that I'm doing it yet, but if there are people to split expenses with it'd be much more attractive.

(Note to those considering going to this: my recommendation is really just to stay in the heart of Chicago. The Horseshoe has 25-minute bus rides leaving from the Hyatt on Wacker pretty frequently, there's obviously tons more to do at night in Chicago than in NW Indiana, and plus you'd be able to take the L straight from the airport to your hotel, eliminating the need for any rental cars.)

Anyway, not much poker for me this month. I'm skipping altogether trying to get to 7500 VPPs for Supernova in February--I have a bunch of other stuff going on, including prepping for (at least one, possibly more in the works) job interview for a really exciting opportunity. I just played for the first time in almost a week and promptly got hammered for a $1600 loss, putting me at -900 for the month, although I'm running 2.5k under EV. Grand total of like 4k hands this month, serious grindin'.

Highlight of my week though, was when my friend Amanda called me about 6 PM last night and told me she had an extra ticket for me to go see UNC vs. Duke at the Smith Center last night. I bet it is really hard for you all to guess what my reply was! Sucks we lost, but at least it was an entertaining game for most of it. It was actually the first game I've gone to at the Dean Dome since the Hansbrough-Gerald Henderson elbow game in 2007. I've never considered it an ideal venue to watch college hoops in but the atmosphere at UNC-Duke cannot be beat. If any of you ever get a chance to go to UNC-Duke, do so at all costs.

That's all for now. Will probably not play much tomorrow or Sat but want to grind Sunday and hopefully bink Stars' $1mm lottery. Good luck all, have a good long weekend.

Well first of all as I write this UNC is down 53-33 to UVA so it looks like the Heels are completely toast. They're gonna be 2-4 in the ACC with 3 home losses already. For now it looks like Carolina is a football school!

Anyway January went fine poker wise. 23k hands and 30 MTTs which met the goals I set for myself for volume. Profit wise, +7400 in cash -600 in donkaments. Obv goal for February is to work on the MTT game. Was 0 for my last 18 until I mincashed the Turbo Takedown for $110 today. If anyone has a favorite MTT video on Leggo, I'm open for suggestions!

Since I had to grind (at least by my definition) to get to 7500 VPPs over the weekend I'm gonna take tomorrow off, then get back on things Tuesday. Would like to post some pictures of this place right now. There is more snow on the ground than I think I've ever seen in my 5 years in NC. Pretty cool.

I love the Sagarin predictor basketball ratings. I find that their evaluations of UNC have been right on the money the past few years.

2008: Predictor had UNC as one of the top 2 teams in the country, but I cautioned everyone that the Heels could be in trouble if they ran into a hot Kansas team.

2009: Predictor had UNC as far and away #1, probably at least a 2-point favorite on neutral court against any other team.

2010: Predictor has the Heels as the 7th best team.... in the ACC.

I'm not going to try to analyze reasons why the team sucks so much this year (not my area of expertise), just going to point out that this team is in a ton of trouble, maybe more than anyone realizes. From here on out, if they beat the teams they should beat, they'll probably go 4-1 at home the rest of the way, losing only to Duke. Trouble is, they still have 6 road games left, and given the parity of the ACC and how tough it is to win on the road, it's likely they won't be favored in any of them. Combine that with their 2-3 record so far (including 2 home losses!) and we're looking at Carolina ending the season with a 6-10 ACC record, 17-14 overall. Yikes.

Compare this to the public perception--if UNC beats UVA at home Sunday (very good chance this happens) they will be probably back in the top 25. Most bracket projections I see have the Tar Heels as a 7 or 8 seed right now, but sadly, it looks like the reality could be much grimmer.

In poker news I've probably played about 18-20k hands this month so far, and up $5k or so in mostly a bunch of 100NL and 200NL HU with a little 6max mixed in. I liked Clayton's recent post about only playing the types of poker you like at any given time. I'm pretty fed up with 6max at the moment. Right now, after switching back from HU, it often feels like fold, fold, fold, cooler QQ<KK, fold, fold, fold, etc. Maybe a project of mine should be to switch back to 6max sometime soon, but start back at something like 25NL and play like grogheadflow. That sounds like it'd actually be a lot of fun.

In donkaments I'm 5/21 cashing but all were essentially mincashes so I'm stuck $339 for the month.

Unlike last year I'm dividing action pretty evenly between Stars and FTP, so I've only notched 6k VPPs for January and wanna get to 7500 to maintain the Supernova pace. If I can't get enough HU action I may look to play some 6max just to get to the goal (oh noes!). Also, I set a goal to play 30 MTTs a month so I'll be on that horse again, luckily its double guarantee week on FTP. If I can get up $6k for the month I'd consider that a fine start to the poker year.

P.S. Whats up with Stars making everyone pay through the nose for hotels in their NAPT packages? I love the Venetian but if I'm just going to Vegas for a donkament I'd rather stay on the cheap. And Mohegan would have potential but if I busto, I'd rather go hang with friends in New York than stay chained to a hotel in Nowheresville, CT that I already paid for. C'mon guys, seat only satellites, make it happen....

GG sleep schedule :-(. I've been pretty sick the past few days, which morphed into very very sick the first half of today (didn't really help that I went out drinking to watch the BCS Championship game the night before). So I spent half the day napping off my sickness and not being productive which means I've now got no shot of sleeping anytime soon. Yay!

Until then I will probably just catch some South Park and the last episode of Jersey Shore. I will go ahead and vouch for Jersey Shore and say that if you all aren't watching it yet you should seriously consider doing so. The reason I like it so much is that, growing up in Pittsburgh and going to the Jersey Shore at least once most summers, I can say that the show is a pretty accurate look into a specific subculture there. This is not to rip on Jersey or say that everyone there is like that, but every summer there are tons of guys exactly like Pauly D who end up at beaches in New Jersey, and getting a look into their life is awesome IMO.

Also I tried really hard to hate The Situation but it's impossible. He's an awesome dude.

Obligatory poker content: played about 6k hands in January so far. I'm having enough success HU that I moved up to dabble in some 200NL. Wow some of these guys are a tad aggro!! Maybe 3betting 65% is just a bit excessive.

Oh and one more note: if you live in the Triangle and like sushi check out Sushi Thai in Cary and Shiki Sushi in Durham. Tried both for the first time this week, both awesome.

Now that I’ve talked a little about poker goals, here are a few life goals I’m going to be chasing in 2010. This section will probably be shorter because, after all, this is Leggopoker and I intend to keep my writings here relatively on the game of poker (who knows how long that will last, though).

Main life goal for 2010 is that I’ve decided to get a job. I quit my job in the trading industry for personal reasons in March 2009, and though I see the advantages of self employment, I miss the stability of receiving a regular check and not having to sometimes dip into savings to pay bills. I now feel more confident than ever that I know what I’m looking for in employment, at least in general terms. Finally, as I alluded to in my last post, having a steady income will allow me to be more aggressive in bankroll management with my poker and personal investment ventures, and more risk = more reward (in MANY cases, at least. In fact I might make an entire post on BR management theories, I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a bit recently).

So what am I looking for? Something quantitative, probably in finance since that’s what my resume is best suited for, but not necessarily. I’d like to stay in this region of the country—I currently live in the Raleigh/Durham metro area but am also going to be looking at anything in Washington, DC or Charlotte. I’m relatively flexible on salary, but would like to limit my working hours to about 40-45 in order to have time to pursue other interests. This last one might be kind of tough in the finance industry.

I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing what’s available for me. I have a business & econ double major from a top 50 university, very solid quantitative skills, and good (albeit short) work experience. I’ve got a 10 month resume gap but like I said before, it was necessitated by family circumstances so I think I can explain that in an interview. The caveats I set above may limit my opportunities, but of course I'll be willing to bend on them if it seems it'll be necessary.

Second life goal is to continue research I’ve been doing in futures markets. This is the industry I used to work in and I feel there is a lot of money to be made by quantitatively analyzing and backtesting trading strategies—and, with the continued availability of leverage in futures, a private investor like myself can still pretty much gamble as much as is desirable, and make a lot of money in a short period of time if trading with a big edge. Might talk more about this later.

Those are pretty much the only big goals I have to talk about. I guess there’s the usual, you know, make new friends, stay in decent shape, but everyone makes those every year so not going to bore anyone with that. I’ll hopefully be able to get on track and accomplish all these early in the new year, and will definitely keep you all posted on this.

Anyway I hate playing poker on Mondays for some reason (i haven't had a winning Monday in ages), so probably not doing much of that today, though maybe will try an MTT or two. I’ll post some more poker related content in a few days after I’ve played some more. Good luck at the tables all.

Hello Leggopoker! I’m going to start blogging here in 2010. I like to write about a lot of different stuff, but my blog tends to gravitate toward poker anyway, so this seems like an appropriate place to put it. Additionally, I’m gonna be staying a few weeks at the Leggo house organized by Lostinthesaus this summer, and while I’ve briefly shot some emails back and forth with both him and Robin Ripper, I’d like to become more active in the Leggo community so I can get to know more of you that I look forward to meeting this year.

Admittedly, I’m not the only one to write a post discussing New Years’ resolutions, but I figure it’s a pretty decent way to introduce myself and give you all some idea of where I stand in poker and life, and where I’m going, so here goes. (This, Part 1 of my list, will be about some poker goals I have for 2010.)

Preface: first, a taxonomy of where I stand in the poker world. In 2009, my main game was 200NL on PokerStars where I played 196k hands and won at a rate of 2.94 PTBB/100 (EV adjusted winrate was 2.30). According to OPR, I played 219 donkaments on Stars with an ABI of $69 and an ROI of -15%. (My ROI was much higher toward the end of the year; this time last year I was a total donk in tournament poker but I understand it better now). After I quit my job early in the year, I considered trying to step up a game and go professional, but I’ve since realized that it’s not the path I want to pursue (more on this later). In the meantime, though, I luckboxed a cheap summer sublet in Vegas and went out to the WSOP for 7 weeks. Played 2 $1500 NLHE events and didn’t cash in either, but made enough in 2/5 and 5/10NL at the Venetian and the super soft sit-n-goes at the Rio to be a slight winner for the trip. Here’s where I plan on going from here:

1. Become more active in the Leggo community.
I guess this blog is a good start. Anyway I’ve been watching a decent amount of videos, but clearly my game will progress more through discussing hands and concepts with the great poker minds here. I don’t know at what frequency I’ll be blogging, but I will be frequenting the forums much more often to discuss and post hands.

2. As my game improves, take more shots at bigger 6max games.
Since I know I’m not going to be playing professionally in 2010, I can be more aggressive with bankroll management. In 2009 I played 29k hands at 400NL and about 3k at higher stakes, during which I lost about $1800 in total, but ran $3k under EV. In 2010 I’m going to be looking for soft lineups to take advantage of, and taking shots when appropriate.

3. Sharpen MTT game through watching videos
I’m a sucker for donkaments, and the dream of shipping a Sunday Million or WSOP bracelet is too much for me to give up. Like I said in item #2, I can be more aggressive with BR management in 2010, meaning that I can take shots in MTTs while absorbing the absurd amount of variance that doing so entails.

4. Play more Heads Up NLHE
I started playing more HU toward the end of the year (mostly 100NL) and like it. Even if it never becomes my main game, I feel it gives me a lot of training in reading ranges which is applicable to all forms of poker.

5. Reinvest in my game
I think this is a pretty important one, and is another byproduct of not having to live off of my poker BR. If I hit an MTT score or run like Jesus in cash games, I want to use some of the money to get good coaching, buy Aejones’ Memoirs, or something like that. I recently purchased Tri Nguyen’s newest book and am currently absorbing the information in there. I’ve never had a coach, but it’s clear to me that the right coach could also help bring my game a long way

6. Grind… a little bit
Probably one of the weakest parts of my poker game is that I hate grinding. The idea of playing 75k hands a month does not appeal to me at all, and I pretty much never play more than 4-6 tables of 6max. Apart from that, it seems likely that I will have a lot of non-poker stuff keeping me busy in 2010. So with that, I’m going to set modest goals of 20k hands/month of 6max and HU (combined), and 25 MTTs a month. My goal is for quantity over quantity—if I’m playing 20k hands a month 4-6 tabling and thinking about them, rather than autopiloting 50k/hands a month, I feel it’s better for me in a ton of different ways.

OK this is getting longer than most essays I wrote in college, so I’m cutting it off here. Tomorrow or Monday I will post part 2, dealing with my career and life goals for the year. Also, I will try to revisit this post on February 28 to see how I’ve made progress. Best of luck in the new year!