Remember When Poker Was Fun...

... well it still is to be honest :-)

I was just looking through some old screenshots and came upon the one above. This was my very first MTT win on March 19, 2010 in the $4.40 4 max 1000 capped game on Stars. I wasn't very good back then so I have no idea how I won this tournament. Well  I guess that would be luckboxing for sure because I had little skill then. 

What's the funniest thing about this is how excited I was to win $640. Now I bitch and moan if that's all I win in a tournament, and unfortunately with only being able to play on the remaining US facing sites $640 is often 1st and 2nd place money in so many of the tournaments available. So I guess this is the part that's no fun really.  

Poker is just so much more stressful now for several reasons. First not having the big field MTTs that we had on PokerStars or Full Tilt makes the payouts so small it's very hard to win any significant money. Second playing the same real good regs in almost every game is extremely tough. Third playing for my only source of income (well household secondary income to be honest), especially in the current US conditions, is very stressful. So while I still enjoy playing and wouldn't give it up for anything it's just not the fun past-time that it used to be. 

There are some positives to the current situation though. I've had to really work much harder on my game than I ever would have if I were still playing on PokerStars, as I'm sure I've said previously, but all in all poker was just way more fun on Stars and Full Tilt.

On a different, but somewhat similar note, I'm contemplating spending a few weeks in Rosarito, MX playing back on Stars and the soon to relaunch Full Tilt. I don't have enough details to make a decision right now but it is currently an option. It would be so much fun and a great experience, not to mention an opportunity to make much more significant money. Some of the people going are really great players and it would be a great opportunity to learn from some the best, which makes it even more enticing. 

Hoping to finally have a good weekend, especially a good Sunday, this time so I have my fingers crossed. Making lots of money is always fun. 

The Day Off....

I had planned to not take any days off from poker until after Poker Maximus was over but after the last few grueling days I changed my mind and decided to take today off, it is after all Labor Day. I had planned to go to a fine arts festival at Marietta Square but the weather decided not to cooperate with that idea. Instead I slept until I decided to get up then went out for dinner and frozen yogurt. I'm about to watch a couple of movies with my daughter and then go to bed. I have to admit I couldn't help but rail one friend's final table but that was my only transgression for the day. He's been running pretty badly and I really wanted to rail him in hopes that he wins this. He works hard and he's really good at poker but he's been seeing the bad side of variance without much of a break for a too long. I'm actually railing him while writing this and he just suffered a couple of really nasty beats. I guess since technically this is a poker blog this is my second transgression for the day but what can I say. 

I'm really excited about Poker Maximus and I'm planning to spend the next couple of days reviewing, reading and working on leak finding to get ready. I'll play some but I'm going to play a bit of an abbreviated schedule and devote more time to working out some kinks. I've been getting way too frustrated after suffering some too frequent but typical beats over the last few days so I'm going to try to work on that aspect of my mental game as well. 

On another note PokerStars is running WCOOP with guarantees up in the millions while we poor U.S. players get Poker Maximus with a $530 buy in high stakes Main Event with only a $200,000 guarantee and a $60 buy in mid stakes Main Event with only a $150,000 guarantee. Lucky people who don't live here. Last Poker Maximus all the guarantees went up pretty high since the turn out was much higher than expected but with the departure of Lock Poker who knows if that will happen this time. 

I'm going to remember the 6 Ps while trying to get prepared for Poker Maximus: 

Proper 
Planning
Prevents 
Piss 
Poor 
Performance 

So here's to the 6 Ps and Poker Maximus! May the rungood commence!

Update: My friend finished 3rd, he recovered nicely from the first beat but lost a hand with QQ v JJ, the guy hit a set and that hand took most of his stack :( 

Practice as if you are the worst...

I recently realized after going through a long downswing that part of my problem was that my confidence level was really low. I second guessed every play I made and just didn't believe I'd ever get to playing winning poker. The lower my confidence sunk the more I just couldn't win. It became a vicious circle. 

During this time there were some poker friends who were very critical of my play and while I'm sure they meant to be constructive it just made my confidence even lower. I'm now around a new group of players and have found that I can hold my own with most of them. There are a few serious sickos who I will continue to strive to play as well as but for the most part I don't feel totally outmatched. When I first joined the Imawhale staking group I was really worried that the other MTT players would be so ahead of me that it would just make  my confidence worse but I found the exact opposite to be true. This is the nicest group of guys and they are all so supportive and helpful and they never make me feel like a poker moron, even though I can be one at times.  

Things are going so well, I just finished my first set of games and finished with a nice profit. My second set started off a little rough but it's starting to pick up. I had two final tables tonight with a first and second place finish and one other cash. Tonight at one of my tables I think I got one of the nicest compliments a tournament player can receive, two people at the table told me I scared them, LOL. I didn't think I was that scary actually and I'm glad to know I may have been mistaken. 

Just remember, poker can be a brutal game. Play your best and study hard and surround yourselves not with people who make you feel worse but with people who help you to feel better. 

The Monster Turn Around

It appears that my downswing is on the upswing. This week I won the coveted Mid-Week Monster on Merge for just over $4000 and the same night I made two other final tables with a second and third finish for a $5K day. I love $5K days and they’re hard to come by in the U.S. online poker world these days. 

Between last Saturday and today I made 7 final tables one of which was my first final table on the Revolution Network and two were on True Poker with the others on Black Chip Poker (Merge).  Since starting with Imawhale (see blog here) I’ve  made 11 final tables. My second biggest cash was forth in the True $50K guarantee for $3400. 

I have to say that my game today is much improved as compared to even six months ago. A lot of things that I had a hard time with a few months back have really started coming together and making sense to me . Poker is such a complicated game and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get to a point where you can really win consistently. In retrospect I really was running bad but I was also not playing my best either and the longer the runbad continued the worse it affected my game. 

I did a good bit of reading over the last couple of months and I read Jared Tendler’s The Mental Game of Poker which is a must read for any serious poker player. It will not only change the way you look at variance and your poker game but it will even help you with everyday life things as well. I love the learning concept and I’m really seeing where as my A game improves so does my C game so that even on a not so great day I’m playing the same game that I considered my A game a few months back, thus helping in the consistent winning department. 

Two other great books I’ve read that I highly recommend are Kill Everyone and Raiser’s Edge. Kill Everyone covers a lot of fundamentals without being boring to an intermediate player and Raiser’s Edge goes into much more complicated play on a more advanced level. Reading these three books helped me tied up many lose ends with things I was struggling with as well as giving me ideas for adding new twist and turns to my play book. (LOL I think that sounds lame but I’m leaving it.)

No matter how rough things seem and how shitty bad variance gets just know that:

1. It’s probably not all bad variance so work hard to step up your game.

2. The part of it that is bad variance is something you can do nothing about so deal with it and stick it out and it will end eventually. (Try to whine as little as possible, it's really annoying but a little is allowed)

My very favorite quote and one I repeat to myself often is...

“You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible, the difference in a winner and a loser is the loser thinks he doesn’t deserve it” 

It’s true you will, I just did and guess what, I’m sure sometime in the future I’ll run even worse than this time. I’ve had a few stretches of bad variance and the good thing is with each new one I’m able to handle it better than the last one and that is progress. Yep that sounds lame too but oh well. Here’s to some extended run good and play good!

The Decision!

Wow it's been awhile since I've written a blog post. Well I wrote a couple but decided not to publish them since I felt they were unnecessarily negative and served no good purpose. I'm really good about blogging when things are going well and I have something to brag about but I don't blog much when things are going bad or just not so great. 


Variance reared it's ugly head the beginning of May and it's all been downhill since with little recovery. I think the runbad has improved and I've made a few final tables but no wins or decent cashes so my bankroll took a hard hit. As a result I made a decision to go with Imawhale.com staking group. I've looked into other staking groups before but I've always decided against them because I didn't want to have to worry about getting knee deep in makeup and I didn't feel that there were enough positive aspects of the groups I've had offers from. Imawhale is different, they reset makeup after each set of 300 games so you don't end up up to your eyeballs owing them every dime you make. They also have a Skype group for the MTT players and it's a great group of guys (yeah as usual I'm the only female) all of whom are good winning players, some even great winning players. We can share hands and strategy and help each other to improve. The support is great! If anyone is looking for MTT or cash game backing I highly recommend this group. 


I really think this has been one of the best decisions I've made in a long time. I'm really feeling good about poker again and looking forward to working with this group. I've never fully understood why so many poker players were staked but I'm starting to really understand it now. So here's to all the good that's to come! 

Up, up and away...

Well looks like the graph is moving the right direction. After a fairly slow month it's finishing up with a bang. Tonight I finished 4th in the $22 $17.5K guaranteed and 8th in the Sunday High Roller $60K guaranteed for a total of $2993 for the day bringing my total profit for the month up to $3666.  So far this year I've made just over $11K.


I really feel like my play has improved considerably. I've had a few coaching session over the last few weeks and they've help tremendously. I'm more willing to make riskier plays when necessary and I seem to be getting the timing of these plays right more often than not. I made a pretty dumb mistake tonight in the $17.5K which probably cost me a thousand or so, yep costly mistake. It was due to a couple of my worst leaks, 1. Acting too fast and 2. Not fully thinking through the villains range in that situation. I was also being a bit of an aggrotard with that play. Live and learn though, mistakes might cost me but at least I think I'm learning from them.


One more day to go so maybe I'll get lucky and win some more money tomorrow. Until then....


Edit 4/30: Finished 3rd in the $33 $6K guarantee tonight for another $740. Ran like God in that game until I ran my AJs into 99 and whiffed. Oh and I forgot about swapping some money to Hero so my actual profit for the month was actually about $4100 before the $740 tonight which actually counts for May since the game finished after midnight. 

Black Friday One Year later...

This time last year was one sad sad sad day for online poker in the U.S. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first found out, I doubt I'll ever forget it. It's kind of like when Elvis died, yeah I'm that old, or when Princess Diana died. I remember where I was and what I doing when I heard about those two tragedies too.

I was just starting to actually become a consistent winner at the game. On Black Friday I was getting ready to go out and run some errands and looked at my phone and saw an email from Lupe Soto and LIPS about the indictments. I remember throwing my phone on the bed a saying some things about it. I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening until a couple of hours later when I got home and saw all the talk on Skype, Facebook and Twitter and realized I couldn't register for any games on PokerStars.

I had over $4000 in my account and of course panicked a bit about that. I tried to make a withdrawal but later went back and cancelled it. One of my very first reactions, and this was way before anyone knew about the mess Full Tilt was in, was thank God my money is on PokerStars. I always felt that it was safe and that I would eventually get it. As everyone knows PokerStars came through and had everyone paid in a very short period of time.

PokerStars was starting SCOOP and I had already won a couple of satellite seats through the blogger freerolls and I was looking forward to the SCOOP games. It was the first time I was actually rolled to play most of the mid stakes games and I had great hopes of doing well. The ladies Sunday $55 had just started back up and I had final tabled 2 of the first 3 games and had gotten to play with Vanessa Selbst and Liv Boeree, I had even busted Liv in one the game and had gotten doubled up by Vanessa in another. These things like everything to do with Stars was over thanks to corporate greed, political corruption and government meddling in our private lives. Thousands of professional online players were out of work in the worse economy in decades. A billion dollar industry was shut down and all for what? I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Well that's the past, it's still sad but it's over and there is nothing we can do about it. On to the present, of course I'm still playing online and I'll continue to as long as there is a place to play. It's been a rough year with lots of poker ups and downs. I've managed to bust a bankroll more than once during the year but I had a good month in October and the last couple of months have been the best ever. Hopefully the DOJ will leave the remaining sites alone for awhile and things will continue on an upward trend. My game has never been better and it's improving daily. I have to say I don't think my game would be where it is without Black Friday. Making money on PokerStars was so much easier than it has been on Merge. For so long the competition was so tough there was no choice but to work hard on improvements. So I guess as they say every cloud has a silver lining and when one door closes another one opens.

Nevada and now New Jersey seem to be making great strides in legalizing online poker within their states and maybe this year we'll finally see some good federal legislation pushed through. We can continue to work for it and to hope but at least the states are starting to move in the right direction.

Well Happy Black Friday anniversary to everyone, such a sad day it was.

March Madness 2012...

At the beginning of the month I wasn't sure how much I was to even going play Poker Maximus events but luckily on Sunday, Mar. 11 I decided to play a few games. I bought into the $33 event 23 with only a $167 bankroll, not a bankroll strategy I'd actually recommend. I ended up finishing in 3rd for my best cash ever. After that I was a full fledged MTT addict again.

I went up to Harrah's Cherokee with my Mom for couple of days the day after this nice finish and played some live cash. Netted a $570 profit for a few hours play on my first day but then lost a couple of hundred the next day but left with over a $300 profit so not too bad, beats losing.

Then on Wednesday night I won the $11 2r 1a $8.5K guaranteed for another nice cash. I was on a roll, or so I hoped. Alas nothing else great happened. I had a couple of other cashes in Poker Maximus events but nothing great but that's just how it goes in MTTs.

Funny thing.... all my best cashes have been in March. In March 2009 I finished 49th in the Cake $250K guaranteed for $645. This was my first real money cash and I'd only been playing for real money for a few days before this game. Then March 2010 I won the $4.40 $2K guarantee on Stars for $640. March 2011 I finished 7th in the $11r $50K guarantee for $1571 and made the most in a month ever for a total of $3400. Then these two great cashes above this March. Next year I guess I should go to every live event I can find in March.

I hadn't played much on Carbon until recently since I'd mostly been playing on Hero so my previous MTT results weren't too great so below is what a SharkScope graph looks like when a fish gets lucky and wins some nice money...

Guess I'm going back to the cash grind now. I'll still do MTTs a couple of days a week but I'll mostly be playing cash on Intertops for April and maybe into May. MTTs can really drain a bankroll without something to supplement it so I really want to get to where I play cash for a steady income and MTTs for the extras. Needless to say I'm pretty happy with my results this month and hopefully I won't have such a long dry spell between good cashes this time.

Run good saved the day...

The Prop Bet:

Finished the 10K hands prop bet and won! Many thanks to the poker gods for the run good over the last 3K hands. Not that I ran that bad over the first 6 to 7K but I just stayed in the red during that time. It was my worst run since I started playing cash in January. One thing I realize and fully admit is there was some play bad mixed in during that downswing. I made some bad decisions and I paid for them. As you can see from the graph I didn't really run below EV very much at all but at times I wasn't running that great either. That coupled with some play bad cost me but that's poker. I learned from every mistake and corrected them as best as I could.

I have to say I was pretty happy about how well I handled the downswing. In the past I would of gotten all tilted and wanted to give up swearing that I just suck at cash instead of excepting that's just how it goes. This time I evaluated my play and figured out how much was my fault and how much was just normal unavoidable coolers and moved on, got back on the tables the next day and pushed ahead. I had only two episodes of insane monkey tilt and it went away really fast once I interjected a little logical thought.

The Month:

I played 19,142 hands this month with a decent profit for 10NL. I wanted to try to make it to 20K but after the last two days trying to finish the prop bet I was just too tired and/or lazy. Overall I was very happy with my February results. I'm playing pretty well overall and really improving my post flop decisions, which was a really weak area prior to this cash grind. I'm learning to slow down and think more about my opponents ranges and on what level they are thinking and thus making more correct decisions. Hopefully next month will go as well.

The Total Results:

Almost 30K hands down at 7BB/100 which is just amazing. My total Carbon bankroll is now $300. My goals for next month are dependent on what I decide to do about playing Poker Maximus games, the MTT event series running this month on Merge. In the past I would of been so excited about an MTT series like this but now I'm kind of so so about it. I hate to take much time away from cash to play for hours in MTTs and min cash or less. Of course there is the reason we play MTTs, those big cashes that actually happen sometimes but just not nearly often enough. I'll know by the middle of next week which direction I'm going and I'll post some March goals at that point. No matter what, I want to get in a minimum of 10 to 15K hands of cash and I'd love to move up to 25NL by month's end but that might be a bit of a stretch. For now, decision time...

25K hands, reality and keeping on...

This week has been a bit rough but I did get in over 5,000 hands. Of course I'm a tiny bit in the red but after getting down to -$50 I ended only .44 cents down for the week. The reality of variance set in but I definitely admit to plenty of play bad thrown in for good, or bad, measure. I really don't feel that I ran that bad overall but a few days I just played spewy and my losses were the result. This is what playing like a fish will do for you...

Luckily I've ended on a good note with the last three sessions being positive. I have four more days to complete 10,000 hands and I have to be in the black at the end so I'm hoping for a sweet heater and no more stupid playing.

As for MTTs well every time I play one I certainly remember why I decided to play cash. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't switch to cash a long time ago. MTTs are just gross! Well except when I bink a nice one but that just doesn't happen often enough.

Onward and upward with the cash grind, at least I'm hoping for upward...

Another week complete...

Another good week of cash games finished. As you can see I fell quite short of my goal of 7500 hands, I suck at volume. I only got in about 4200 hands but with a nice profit so while I'm disappointed in myself for not meeting my volume goal I can't complain about the profit results.

I've hit 20K hands and am still running pretty decently. I've had a few losing sessions of course but many more winning ones. While I very seriously doubt 10BB/100 is at all sustainable over a larger sample it's certain nice for now.

As for MTTs I really am not playing too many. I'm getting more and more hooked on cash and I love the freedom I have and not being stuck in MTTs for 5 to 8 hours straight. I get to eat at a normal time and play in 2 to 3 hour sessions and can actually work my games around my life instead of my life around my games. I might turn out to be a cash game player after all. We'll see how I feel around 50K hands.

I made a prop bet for the rest of the month with a friend. We have to play 10K games with a profit by the end of the month. We did a $5 bonus bet for the most profit. I need the motivation and I hate to lose prop bets so hopefully I'll win this one. I have 1K hands down so far.

Hopefully my graph lines will continue to climb, so next update at the end of the month unless something really spectacular happens between now and then.

Cash games - one month in...

Yesterday was one month since I started trying to grind up $11 on Carbon playing cash games. I have to say it's gone way better than I expected. I've tried a few MTTs here and there but I'm enjoying cash so much more now that I can't wait for the MTTs to be over so that I can get back to the cash games.

I have a confession, I wasn't going to move to 10NL until I had 20 buy ins but I got so bored with 4NL that I moved up at around 13 buy ins. I set a strict stop loss for myself of a 1 to 2 buy in loss to have to drop back and so far so good. My Carbon roll is now $188 so I'm almost to the 20 buy ins. Hopefully one or two more sessions and I'll be there.

Of course I've been lucky and running pretty well at 10NL so I'm really keeping my figures crossed that the run good continues for awhile longer. Of course it's poker and bad variance could be just around the corner.

I've been reading Jared Tendler's The Mental Game of Poker and it's great! I've also tried to watch some cash game videos and I've found a few good ones on Drag the Bar. I'm also following Jared's advice and reviewing after each session while the hands are fresh in my mind and I'm finding that it really helps to pin point leaks and such.

Getting in decent volume is still my worse hurdle. As you can see from the graph over the last 30 days I've only gotten in a little over 16,000 hands. So my goal for this week is a minimum of 7,500 hands between now and next Saturday at midnight. I'm going to have to really push myself to keep from being lazy but hopefully I can do it.

Well here's to volume and continued run good.

Day 21 Update

As you can see I'm actually able to post a PokerTracker graph. I was able to get the PT4 beta and it's running great. It has some really nice improvements over PT3. It is so nice to have it back. My HUD was working on PT3 but I couldn't get to any data without it freezing up my computer.

As for the cash grind as you can see it's been going pretty well over my small sample size. I'm still enjoying playing cash, which is surprising since normally around this point in the past I've gotten bored with it. I've had one or two not so great sessions but still stuck it out and luckily it was only a couple of sessions. I'm sure some worse variance will hit eventually as it is just part of poker.

I've played a few MTTs on Carbon over the last few days and have made some money from those. No wins but 2 final tables and one 13th (18 paid) in the $11 $750 gtd super turbo luckboxament. I was staked for 2 of them and satellited into the one tonight. So with my part of the profit from those games my Carbon roll now stands at $139.

As for my Hero account, that hasn't fared as well. My Hero account balance is a big fat zero. Oh well at least the Carbon balance has fared much better. Unfortunately I prefer playing on Hero because the customer service is 100% better than Carbon. I'm still playing the Hero freerolls so maybe I'll bink the 6 max one for $50 one of these nights.

Being broke on Merge is no fun but having to grind back up is forcing me to work on some issues and leaks in my game so all in all it may turn out to be a good thing.

I finally bought the Kindle edition of Jared Tendler's The Mental Game of Poker and it is amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone who has issues with tilt or other emotional aspects of their game.

Time to go grind some cash so until next time...

Day 7 update

I just finished with my day 7 games. I've moved up to four tables and I'm still moving upward with the bankroll. I had a couple of losing sessions but that's to be expected. I now have in almost 7000 hands of 4NL and my Carbon bankroll is $75.45 with a 10bb/100 win-rate. Of course 7000 is a tiny sample size but it's a good start. Today's profit was $18 but yesterday I was down about $12 so today was getting back my losses from yesterday while still managing to make a few bucks.

No progress on the Hero roll, it's still just under $20 but I've been concentrating mostly on my cash game and haven't really played any MTTs or even freerolls on Hero the last few days. I may or may not work on that much right now.

Surprisingly, at least for now, I'm actually enjoying playing cash which is pretty much a first. I'm not tilting much at all and I'm doing better at staying focused. I just hope it last!!!

Step Over it and Keep Walking....

Day 5 of the bankroll building challenge is complete. I got in 1000 hands of cash today and made another $7. Carbon bankroll is now $61 for a $50 profit since the start. It's totally baby steps and is taking some patience but it's still going well, so far. It's poker, bad days are bound to happen. As a matter of fact after my first session today I was down 2.5 buy ins but the next two sessions went much better and I ended with a small profit.

The last few Sundays playing MTTs were pretty brutal and I ended those days in a pretty terrible mood. Playing cash today was so much less stressful and I'm really starting to enjoy playing cash. One of the hardest things about poker is getting through the downswings and bad days but you have to push on and realize that every day can't be a winning day.

For now I'm still crawling through 4NL and hopefully by next weekend I'll be up to 10NL with a little luck and lots of study and review. I want to have 25 buy ins for 10NL so it'll take some volume and some run good to there in a week. Here's to doing it!

Yoda "There is no try"!

After my fourth day of playing 4NL cash my Carbon bankroll after rakeback is up to almost $55, so I've made $41 so far. I'm actually enjoying playing cash, it's so much less stressful than MTTs. I started the first day with only one table, then day two played two tables and then three tables the last couple of days. I can handle five or six pretty easily but I'm trying to pay closer attention and find any leaks I can, so for now I'll keep it at three for awhile.

As for the Hero challenge, Friday night I finished third in the 3 am 6 max freeroll for $20 taking me up to $32. Today I played a couple of $2.20 45s and a couple of supers and I'm now down to about $19. I think I'm going to just stick with cash on Carbon for the next few days except for playing some freerolls on Hero. Hero has some exclusive freerolls that play much better than the Merge freerolls so I really don't mind playing those.

Hopefully by the next update I will have doubled my Carbon bankroll. Wait, as Yoda said it's either do or don't do, there is no try! So by the next update I WILL double my Carbon bankroll. My the flop be with me. God that was cheesy, forgive me. :-)

The Bankroll Grind

In my last entry I talked about crossroads and decisions and I'm still in limbo as far as that goes. In the meantime my bankroll has suffered much damage after a lengthy period of what is more than likely a combination of runbad, playbad and play even worse due to the runbad. So I am trying to grind it back up as follows...

Hero: Bankroll $16.50

Will play freerolls and micro MTTs and some micro SNGs to try to build this back up.

No progress at this point.

Carbon: Bankroll $11.50 as of Jan. 10

Will play 4NL on Carbon to grind this up.

After playing a few hundred hands yesterday and today playing one to two tables (omg how boring but necessary) I'm up to $24.32 so I've more than doubled my starting amount.

I'm keeping the two separated as to what I play to see which I can run up the fastest. So only cash on Carbon and only MTTs and SNGs on Hero.

I've ran my roll up from a small amount more than once so I have faith and lots of hope that I can do it again. I will post updates at least every other day as to my progress.

Onward and upward!

Crossroads and Decisions

I've reached a point where I'm going to have to make some decisions. It happens, things don't always go like we hope. Obstacles get thrown in our way and we have to decide which path to take to get around these obstacles. We can stay where we are spinning our wheels and trying to hang on to something that is clearly not working out or we can choose the easy path or the more difficult, but most likely better path, around the obstacle. That is where I am now after doing quite a few months of wheel spinning instead of moving on.

Since it's a new year it seems like the perfect time to make some decisions and start things out right especially since this may be our last year on earth ...

A little humor always helps.

Anyway a little over three years ago I discovered the game of poker and fell head over heels, obsessively in love. I fell in love with the game and the poker community as a whole. I worked on learning everything I could about the game and worked on becoming a winning player. I was doing okay between February 2010 and April 2015 and had moved from a breakeven player to a small winning player and was loving every minute of the game. Then came the obstacle otherwise know as Black Friday when the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the three major poker sites. After losing my job the previous October I had thrown everything into improving my poker game and so for me April 15, 2011 dealt me a pretty crushing blow. I had a tough time getting over the feeling of being totally screwed over by my own government and getting over the loss of playing on a site that I dearly loved, PokerStars.

As I said, I've spent the last few months since April trying to figure out what to do. I've been playing since then on Merge but with the exception of October I haven't managed to have another winning month. So here I am standing at the crossroads trying to figure out which path to take.

On a side note, is having a blog and assuming more than two people, if that, even give a rats ass what I have to say egotistical and arrogant? I tend to think it might just be but I digress...

I'm considering the following:

The difficult and scary but possibly very rewarding path - Investing in a franchise and starting an elderly care business.

The easy but very unrewarding path - Getting a regular job in some field in which I have some experience.

The wheel spinning stagnant path - Continue trying to make a living playing poker.

So there it is, path one will more or less mean giving up poker for now because I doubt seriously I'll have any spare time. Path two will mean dropping poker for awhile but probably picking it back up in a few months. I tend to think I'm to the point where taking an extended break from poker is a good thing for me to do, as hard for me as it will be. Ah but the conundrum, winners never quit and quitters never win but I think it's at least necessary to make a decision between one and two and take that much needed break or give up poker completely.

I'll know more about the franchise opportunity in a few days and if anyone actually cares I'll keep this blog updated as to my decisions.

Happy New Year!

Here's to a better and more prosperous 2012.

One of the poker forums I participate in has a new thread "Best moment of 2011", only one person has posted so far and the thread was started on December 27th. Unfortunately, at least for U.S. online poker players 2011 was anything but a great year. I've honestly tried to reply to the thread a few times but just can't come up with much. I did win a couple of MTTs with over 300 players on Merge and had quite a few final tables and overall my game, mindset and thought process has improved quite a bit but it's just hard to say those things would qualify as a best moment. So that said I'm hoping for several best moments in 2012. Hopefully I'm due for some.

As for legislation, the DOJ statement on the Wire Act applying only to sports betting, while not as big a deal as some people thing it is imo, is at least a step in the right direction as far as hopefully getting some online poker legislation started in the U.S. You can read more about it here.

On a bit of weird note, I seem to have picked up an obsessive hater. It's pretty weird actually since this person has only played about 91 tournaments and 1600 hands of mostly limit holdem cash on PokerStars and really played nothing I even played. I must have pissed her off in some game on Merge but I have no idea what her username on Merge is so I have no idea what/where it was. She (I'm assuming she since I referred to her as dude and she replied saying she wasn't a dude) left me a nasty message on Poker Table Ratings on my Merge username rating page, to which I replied with an apology for whatever is was I did. She said I berated someone, her I'm assuming, which I admit to very rarely but occasionally saying something to a very few people in chat but usually only as a reply to something said to me and I try my best not to since it's really dumb and inexcusable but we all have bad days once in awhile. She has continued to reply back with really outrageous statements, foul language and name calling, even after I apologized initially. She has obviously googled me and found this blog and other information about me since she mentioned these things in her crazy replies. I made the mistake of replying back to her a few times but I really wish I hadn't. I have no idea what in the world I did to this nut but no more than she plays I couldn't of run into her on more than couple of occasions. I've reported her to PTR and asked that she be banned from posting anymore on my ratings page and I informed her that I had done this. She's obviously a bit unbalanced or just extremely young and immature but damn how nuts this is! As they say haters gonna hate!

Well I hope everyone has a great 2012! Good luck at whatever you pursue!