So, its been awhile. I've hardly played or studied poker in the last few months, a little lurking here and on 2p2 aside and it just became apparent how out of touch with the game I've become.

With that in mind I'd like to throw out a quick apology to all the people, friends and others alike, that I've ignored lately. I've been rather busy and left far too many pms/ims unanswered.

The last few days have been extremely lazy, basically just watching bowl games with family and trying to find a way to assign vince young a +DVOA for just winning from the bench. I'm probably heading out to phoenix for the NBA all star game in feb, which should be awesome (Joe Alexander for the dunk contest pls) as I haven't been to many basketball games since Ewing retired. Chances are I'll be here til sunday before heading back to NYC to grind real life, time enough for me to sweat the Titans' 2nd round matchup and watch GTown dismantle Pitt.

I just noticed the NFL Draft thread on 2p2 and will prob look through that in the next few days (a cursory search reveals my favorite player ever has yet to be drafted), wish I had more to say but **** life is boring sometimes.

oh my video went up last month and it didn't seem to be recieved that well, if anyone wants to post a criticism i'd be happy to read it and respond. my NL game is pretty rusty these days but I kinda miss talking about poker.

Happy new year all,
Wu

Not the restaurant (although it is rather sick) and not really a legit blog entry for that matter. Just a quick shoutout to the scandis for excellence in distilling and naming said distillations.

Admittedly, my blog sucks. Personality wise its just not in me to make even semi frequent updates with any real semblance of content. But its past5am and I find myself in Atlantic City of all places so might as well write for a bit. Rather than rant about AC I'll just say its reminiscent of Vegas looking into one of those funhouse mirrors that distort your reflection making you look decrepit and perhaps a little deranged.

I've only been here for 2 days or so but I did get a chance to hang out with Rob, Travis and Mikech which is always fun. Nothing I feel compelled to write about really, well we did manage a convoluted wireless system that allotted us a whole game of halo on XBL (in which we dominated).

I do have some poker stuff to talk about, played maybe 12 hours of live 2/5 plo in the last 2 nights. Yesterday (I think) myself, Travis, Rob and Mike got the floor staff at the Taj to start up a 4handed PLO game and it remained 4 handed most of the time with 3 randoms dropping in separately and dropping something like 1200 (?) combined. Despite the lineup I can only remember a few decently interesting hands;

1. Rob opens Travis calls otb and Mike calls in the SB and it goes bet, Travis calls and Mike repots on a K87 2tone (think I messed this up a bit actually) Rob calls and Travis folds bottom set. Turn blanks Mike jams Rob folds an OESFD and Mike tables 3 pair (I'm almost positive I butchered this, if one of you reads this pls correct me).

2. Rob opens some random calls in the BB (hes talking a lot, apparently understands the rules so guess thats a plus for him) and he b/3b AI for ~100bbs on 973dd Rob reluctantly calls w A365no fd and binks the turn, guy claims to have 99 w the NFD (on that note, live players complain far too much about suckouts) he rebuys for 500 which leads to the our next hand.

3. Villain is the aforementioned random, who is down to 400 or so. I open K875ds (clubs and spades, pretty hand imo) and random repots me (not sure if there was a coldcall) I flat and flop comes 256r w 2 backdoor fds for me and he bet/calls it off with AA6x no suits. Board runs off 6s 2s and I ship it, he mumbles a bit and wanders off even though I had him crushed.

4. I flat otb w/ AJhh64ss and Rob squeezes, folds to me I peel (we're like 150bb deep at this point). He c/c a 457r flop for ~90 into 130ish turn is a T putting up a spade draw and we both check river is a 3o Rob checks I bet 175 he tanks and calls with T7xx (meh hand from my perspective I guess)

Overall I finished up 400 or so on the session, lost a few unremarkable pots and prob made way too many loose peels etc. We also ended up paying $500 in rake and tips over an estimated 200 hands which is somewhat disturbing.

Earlier tonight we headed to the Borgata, Rob went to play 10/20 while me and Travis played some more 2/5 PLO. What ensued was basically a trainwreck for me, one of the first hands I misread and end up shoving 55xx on AAx33 thinking I had quads. I opened got like 7 callers and get in 120 bbs on 997hh w AKQ9 no relevant suits vs 9664 and get binked. Lost 80bb or so w nut flush vs straight flush and ended up shipping a $300 stack in w KKQxss vs Travis (I hadn't rebought) who had AAxx quite a bit and some guy who just repotted AI for 200bb blind.

Think I played fine in the big pots that session, made this one bluffraise that may be suspect: Guy opens mp (people actually folded to him, pretty sick) I call and everyone else at the table calls so 4 way to a flop of 662ss he leads 50 into 80 and I make it 160 (seems like a pretty decent spot vs tightish 1st level thinkers but I suck at PLO so who knows) either way some guy reships on me and is nice enough to show a boat when I fold getting like 4 to 1. End result I drop 2k ish which isn't very much at all in a 2-5 PLO game but its prob my 7th or 8th live session ever and it tilted me a bit.

So the game breaks I talk to everyone a bit and end up leaving, which brings us back to the present. One last thing, lest people accuse me of being verbose; I seem to have a bit of a psychological problem wrt poker and game types. Specifically, I've posted real good winrates at midstakes 6m over what most would consider a significant sample but I can't grind 6m for any considerable amount of time before I get the urge to immerse myself in a form of poker where my edge is considerably smaller (specifically PLO and to a lesser extent full ring NL and MTTs). And when I play PLO I expect results similar to what I'd attain playing 6m NL which is absurd considering I've been playing 6m nl since 2005 and have maybe 30k hands of PLO lifetime (replace PLO with FR or MTTs and similarly pathetic samples). I feel like this paragraph should have some sort of point or thesis but I just wanted to throw it out there for no reason. Ultimately, I guess my 6m PLO game has to progress to the point where I can comfortably beat 2/4+ eventually since I'm not thrilled about the prospect of moving up to stars 5/10nl. I'll likely resume my attempts at PLO in a month or 2 since my monthly tally is now marred and I have some imminent lifestyle changes to tend to first.

Moving to NYC soon as well, should be a solid step up for me.

That's it for now, gotta say the length of my last 2 blog posts is somewhat alarming.

I'm gonna try to write something of substance for once. Got back from Vegas at the end of July and now I'm at the Jersey shore til next week. So I fly out from NJ on July 15th to live in Bobbo's house with 6-8 other people who I've never met or even talked to before.

I get into Mcarran and hail a cab, waste some time since our house is apparently on a street nobody has ever heard of and finally get to the house. Kirk (nutsflopper, I think) answers the door as I'm wondering how to explain the suitcase bearing asian kid on the doorstep (hi, i'm from the internet didnt seem proper) but luckily Bobbo walked by and saved me the trouble. Its about 2 or 3 pm at the time so naturally nobody else is awake, I think it takes nearly 2 days for me to meet the whole cast after a few arrivals and departures the final roster was something like: Rob, Aaron (manchild), Travis (costanza_g),Gene(genefish?), Alex Olson, Devin(devinlake) and Kirk. Everyone turned out to be cool and I think everyone got along pretty well. Rob is a better blogger/storyteller than me so I'll spare everyone and just do bullet points as they come to me.

-I played about 10x more halo than online and live poker combined.
-As far as live poker, I played 3 sessions (my 2nd, 3rd and 4th ever) 2 at the wynn and one at the venetian (the night Olson got kicked out). I ended up slightly stuck playing mostly 2/5. The wynn was generally awesome but theres not much to really say, I ended up doing alright there. The session at the venetian was somewhat interesting, our 2/5 table consisted of myself, Aaron, Gene, Kirk and Tommy Angelo (didn't know it was him til after) and was worse than similar online games with the exception of a few random softspots who came and went. I didn't play many interesting hands, bricked a big combo draw and lost a few hundred, ran a cold 4b bluff after Aaron misclick minraised UTG and SB repopped to my right and got in a weird hand with Gene where I opened T4o UTG+1 or so and he c/c, donk, donk small on J97r 8 5 with 67 and folded to my river shove (mainly only interesting because I'd been a huge nit and he said he was gonna call down 3 streets on blanks, maybe I'm a huge tellbox).

-I lost a bunch online trying to win a donkament for random prop bets vs Bobbo and Olson
-Got to enjoy eating,drinking,sleeping til 5-8pm every day and other random degen activity.
-This format sucks fwiw.
-Got to sweat some of the housemates a fair amount (mainly Aaron and Alex cause they grind the hardest) even a little 50/1.
-I cooked once and grossly underperformed, alcohol saved me somewhat.
-Met a bunch of people who I'd played against or recognized from 2p2 (I'm not that good with names so I'll just leave it like this rather than forget someone).
-Saw mystere (see Rob's blog) and Blue Man Group both were excellent.
-I woke up to one of the following pretty much every morning(afternoon) "****!!" "WOW" "I CANT BELIEVE THAT!!" halo tilt hits far harder than poker tilt

Don't think I can really drag this out anymore, it was basically wake up then perform some combination of poker/halo/basketball then go somewhere and get back around the time the sun comes up, play some more halo and go to sunrise (sunrise is pretty sick imo). I probably missed a ton but this is already by far the longest blog I've ever written and likely longer than any future entries.

Now I'm at the beach for a few more days and the internet just started working so I'll be grinding some 1/2 HU trying out some new things. The goal is to have a 5figure month at 1/2 since its been awhile now and I'm in the process of abusing cashrefund as much as possible (its unreal how much cashrefund owns). Played 2.5 hours so far, graph below.

I'll try to update more regularly (and obv in less detail).
-Cory

Seems like I'm a few weeks behind everyone else, but I'm heading to Vegas for the first time tomorrow morning.

That is all...

Unlimited # of 50bb min tables, that is all.

Well, it seems I suck at blogging. A quick summary of the past few weeks: I run ok at 2/46m and bad at 2/4 hu then decide it would be a good long term move to learn plo (mostly cause stars 5/10 games scare me lately). Now that I've mentioned plo I'm sure the rest is fairly obvious, what a sick evil stupid game. But yeah I'm behind on hands (due to playing a lot of HU,PLO and even HU PLO), doing ok on hours and still up a whopping 6k on the month.

I would've updated somewhere along the line but omaha really defiled my soul and talking about it just seemed wrong. All that said, I'm still gonna work on my 4card game but good ol 6max NL will be the staple since I somewhat enjoy making money from poker. Sick as it is I'm really looking forward to all the random NL content I've missed.

In other news, my new monitor lets me 12 table w no overlap(still gotta resize) so I might grind some 1/2 or 2/4fr just to see how that feels. And I'd like to start posting in the new fitness/nutrition forum. I tried writing a lengthy post/article type thing on healthy cooking but it never really shaped up that well so hopefully I can contribute with some random stuff there.

Final tally:

ran poorly in most of the AI pots today but really wasn't happy with my play especially the last 1k hands or so. gonna cut down on the multitabling a bit, 6 at the most. apparently its cinco de mayo so this is prob it for today. ill try to post some cool hands when i get to my session review.

Today's morning session:

http://img178.imageshack.us/my.php?image=may5amby5.png

there's another ~2700 hands on my laptop w/ me down a bit over a buyin in those. nothing worth complaining about, pretty standard variance. but if it continues ill probably cut down to 4tables max for a bit, or maybe go back to hu and make sure i'm making good decisions.

gonna have to alter my plan to factor in the fact that i never really play friday nights, so monday to thursday will have to compensate for the missed 2nd sessions on friday.

This is my first ever blog entry, the purpose of which is to track my progress as I attempt to actually put in hands this month. I saw the 3hr a day challenge posted in Thac's blog and it helped me think about grinding hands in a more productive manner, so props to Thac.

I'll likely spare anyone who actually reads this the details of my social life, unless it has something to do with poker or Leggo. Basically my plan is to approach poker like I would weight training and try for a progressive overload of sorts, this is the plan:

May 1st- 2nd 2k hands
May 5-9th 2250 hands
May 12-17th 2500 hands
May 19-23rd 2500 hands
May 26-30th 2750 hands

Obv anything more than that is gravy, as are any weekend hands (unless I fall behind during the week). This baseline gives me 54k hands or so, which is pretty ambitious given my past history but my life is reasonably regimented right now so it shouldn't be too bad.


and the aformentioned morning heater: