Hey its me, Jeff.
Just going to do a quick update since I’m in Coos Bay for a week or so.
Poker has been a shit storm. Running TERRIBLE this month, 26 buy-ins under ev in 35k hands. I’m considering switching back to 6 max as my main game. Not because of the run bad, but because I want to get better. I don’t feel like I’ve improved as much in the last two months as I did the two months before. I’ve also been offered a good coaching deal from FenderJaguar which is sick. I think my main motivation is getting away from SSNL. My goal for last year was to be at 1-2/2-4 reg by the end of the year. I was playing 1-2 6 months ago, and now I’m back to 100nl because I decided to play full ring. I’m taking a bit of a break this week. I’ve been playing 6 max when I play and I’ve actually had fun while playing.
Life has been great. Once I’m on the green side of variance everything will perfect!
Life has been great.
I think cupid has shot me with his arrow because I seem to have fallen back in love with poker. I can’t get enough of it this month, which is unusual. I had been a bit burnt out but lately all I want to do is grind. In the last 24 hours I’ve played 11 hours, slept 1.5, browsed 2p2, and hung out with my grandparents when they were up. I had to stop my session this evening because I wasn’t able to focus on my monitor, though I’m going to blame it on 20 tabling on my tiny laptop screen. I’d like to play right now but I know I wont be as focused as I should be so I’m going to wait until after breakfast tomorrow.
I’ve still had a problem with losing hands at showdown. Over the last 11.2k hands I’ve played on this laptop I’m winning 46% of showdowns. This is pretty bad as I’m usually at 53%. I’m going to blame this on about 30% running bad and the rest on making some silly plays. I’ve been just monkey shoving in some spots where I can’t really be good and for no real reason. I’m going to focus on not doing this during tomorrows session and getting those showdown numbers back up. I have been playing the 50 full ring games as I’d like to get better at playing more tables, though tomorrow I will probably be playing 100 as it’s Saturday and the games are juicy.
I’ve also been putting a lot of thought into what I want my goal to be for next year. I’ve been considering the SNE grind, but I wont know if that will be happening until December when stars announces their VIP program for the full ring tables. What I would really like to happen next year is to be recognized as one of the ten best regulars on SSNL full ring games. I have to put A LOT of work into my game to achieve this. I’ll be thinking about what I need to get that ball rolling.
Thats enough blogging for now, I’m going to read Baluga’s book and get a few hours of sleep.
So this weekend was pretty swingy, as the title suggests. I think from Friday to Sunday I ended up dropping around 1k over the three days from my high point starting Friday and from last night to today made my way back to up a small amount. I played a lot of hands this weekend, though I don’t really know how many since I’m on my laptop, though I think it’s around 17k or so. I developed a little bit of a leak over the weekend where I had become a giant station for some unknown reason. I’m hoping that I cured myself of that today, but we will see over the next few days.
For the holidays I’m going to be going to my grandmas house for a week. My little brother is going to be there and I just found out that his cancer has come back. He was diagnosed with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma about 6 years ago. Last year he was cancer free which was super fantastic but unfortunately it didn’t last. I’m not sure right now as to the extent of the return of his cancer, but I heard he had 9 spots on his lungs. I’ll be going with them to their doctor’s appointment on Friday so hopefully I will have a little bit better understanding of what his current prognosis is. When we found out about it the first time it wasn’t looking great overall, but we can hope that things turn.
That’s about it for now don’t really have a lot on my mind other then that.
Don’t really feel like typing anything to detailed up, so I’m going to just do a quick update of how things have been going.
Cooking has been going pretty well. I have made a few really good meals and successfully made my first cake from scratch. I liked it and I’m not one that normally likes cake. It was a blackberry jam cake. We also put some fresh strawberries on it.
Been doing a good bit of pokering when I can. I’ve played 20k hands this month and I’m running pretty well beating it for about 5ptbb so far. Today was super swingy. I couldn’t seem to win hands at showdown for the life of me. When I first started my session I had way to many tables popping up for a while which lead me to making two pretty big mistakes since I misread the action on one hand and made a play to induce a shove, got my shove and somehow still decided to fold. I was pretty annoyed with myself after I did that. I may put in another session this evening though I’m not to sure if I am feeling it right now.
Today was a pretty amazing day. We decided to go to the Saturday market downtown. I haven’t been since I’ve moved to Portland and after going I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t been more often. There was a lot of really cool, albeit overpriced, things there. I saw a bunch of really cool artwork that I would love to have. Wish I had a ton of extra money to spend and go back and get all of it the stuff. We also went to Voodoo Donuts while downtown which was awesome! The Bacon Maple bars are probably the best thing ever. I’m glad I don’t live close to downtown anymore as I’d probably be eating terribly instead of almost healthy.
I didn’t get a lot of hands in today. Didn’t actually play till a few hours ago when I decided to watch Across the Universe for the forth time in 3 days on my computer. I’ve decided to do what Corwin suggested in one of his CR videos and drop down in stakes and just put in hands when you have extra time. So at night when I get bored instead of browsing 2p2 I’m going to put watch a movie on my other monitor while beating up some 50nl donks. I think I need to work on playing a little more straight-forwardly at 50nl as I spewed off 2 buy-ins in really close spots bluffing. One hand I should have given up because I had a terrible image with the player but didn’t realize it was the same person that I gave a buy-in to a few orbits before that. Still ended up doing really well in the session making 4.5 buy-ins in 1600 hands. I felt like I was playing extremely well save the punting of a few buy-ins.
Made an amazing dinner tonight. I bought some spices at the market and I made some Cajun chicken with steamed vegetables and rice. I’m learning that rice works with every meat that you can make, which is pretty awesome since it’s super easy to do. The spices I bought can be picked up online and if you are by some random chance looking for some awesome dinner ideas I would buy THIS stuff immediately! I also picked up the BBQ sauce which is also fantastic.
So my ratings for this dish:
Taste 9/10
Don’t have a lot to say about it other then it was really good. With the BBQ sauce it was a little bit spicy but very good. I’m don’t normally like BBQ sauce so that definitely has to say something about how good this stuff is.
Ease of prep: 9/10
I think the only thing I’m going to rate 10/10 is making a bowl of cereal. Since I am still pretty lazy any effort on my part will probably cost it one point. To make this was incredibly simple. I cut up some fresh chicken breast fillets into small slices, and then sauted it in a forth cup of butter and 5 tsp of the cajun spice for every pound of chicken I cooked. Covered the dish and viola, dinner is served! Again I would really suggest buying some of these spices. They are great and I’m sure I’ll be using a lot of it in the future.
Ease of clean up: 6/10
Ended up making a bit of a mess with the butter since I am in need of some new pans and lids. Though the mess will come off the dishes really easily, it’s just a bit of extra effort on my part to make sure it’s clean.
Put in a lot of time the past few days playing. I’ve played 9.8 hours int eh last two days. My results have been okay with me running at 2.56ptbb over 7k hands but I’ve been running really bad in all in spots as well as a few really close spots as well as standard cooler hands. I’ve been giving a lot of thought about the SNE program and really trying to figure out how much it’s worth as well as how much effort it is. I’m thinking what I will do is try it the first month of next year to see how well I can do keep up the schedule.
Here is my hand of the day for today. I thought this was fun:
The ol’ 5 bet bluff.
Dinner the past few nights have been nothing special. Friday evening we all went bowling so I had an awesome bacon cheeseburger from the alley. Tonight I made some of the frozen bean and cheese burritos and covered them in cheese, salsa, and sour cream. Going to take a look through the cook book tomorrow to see what I want to make next. I’m open for suggestion if you have any as well.
Today I didn’t get as much time in as I’d like with poker. I woke up really late for some reason and while I was cleaning up last nights mess some friends came over. After they left I got in about 2.5 hour of play and 1600 hands. The session was good but right in the middle I ended up getting coolered for a stack and made a really thin call vs an hyper aggro fish and he had the nuts. Ended up on the session so I can’t complain considering I was stuck a few buy-ins.
Dinner tonight was AMAZING! it was my roommates turn to cook and he made Peach and Steak kabobs. They were amazing!
Pictures:
Ease of preparation: 9/10
So I didn’t actually cook this but it was super simple. There were a few spices and then sticking the meat, bell peppers, and peach on a stick. About ten minutes on the grill and you have an amazing dinner. Unfortunately we didn’t make enough for everyone to have more then one so next time I’ll be making double.
Taste: 9/10
I love steak, plain and simple. So steak and fruit on a stick is going to have a special place in my heart. I will for sure be making much more of these in the future as how easy and delicious it is.
Clean up: 10/10
Throw sticks away. Thats about all the clean up we did.
So for my first meal I made a cuban dish called Picadillo. For these I’m going to try to rate the dish based off a few things. First on how hard/easy it was to make, then on taste, and clean up. Should be fun.
So this dish took me about an hour and forty five minutes to make. The cook book says that it should take me about 45 minutes, but given that I am new to cooking I think that it’s usually going to take me about twice as much time for most of the dishes that I will make.
This is what google says the dish should look like:
What it actually looks like:
Taste: 6/10
I thought the dish was okay and my friends said they liked it, had one person go for seconds! It was a lot different then what I’m used to (read: hamburgers, cereal, and sandwhiches) but was a good different. It calls for stuffed pimento olives and ground hamburger. I really liked this mixture of olives and meat. I think what threw me off the most is the onions. I’m not an onion fan so I’m assuming this had a lot to do with me not liking it more. I think as I become more accustomed to other foods I will enjoy this a lot more then I did. I can’t really think of anything that this dish reminds me of but I would recommend trying it.
Ease of preparation: 5/10
I think that as I get more experienced I will rate this dish very easy to make. It was my first time trying to saute anything and I’m thinking that it was a good thing to start with. I had to make the rice twice, which is a pretty big fail. I didn’t realize I had to cover it after it started boiling and just let it boil forever. Pretty easy noob mistake, but the rest of the dish was pretty easy to make. I’d suggest trying this if you’re new to cooking. I’m thinking it will definitely help with getting the pre-oven work figured out. There was a good bit of diced/minced/chopped stuff in it.
Ease of clean up: 9/10
I ended up only having to use a knife, two pans, and measuring cups. I think this will be some of the easier clean ups I’m going to have.
As you may be able to tell it’s been along time since I have updated. I hit a bit of a life downswing in the beginning of the month and it left me feeling pretty complacent about a lot of things. As any regular reader of this blog can tell, when I am down swinging in poker or life I tend to not update things as often as I should.
Poker has been going great this month. I’ve put in about 45 hours an 26k hands. I’ve been playing a lot full ring lately and feel super confident about my game right now. I have been making some sick reads, sick plays, and just been owning in general. In order to do this I’ve cut down the number of tables that I play on average to 9-11 tables. I’ve noticed that if I play more then that I tend to autopilot to often in very standard spots where I can be picking up a lot of the small pots that I miss out on when I play too many tables. I’d like to figure out what my balance between maximum number of tables that I can play, and being able to play my A+ game as well as keeping my hourly as high as possible. It’s seem that it is really hard to balance this in your poker game. I’m taking today off and will put in five hours of play tomorrow. When I do get time to play I’ve been averaging about 3 hours a day and want to bump that up.
I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about my goals for next year. So far this year I have achieved all of my goals that I set. Everything except getting coaching from Corwin, but I ended up getting coaching from someone else and feel very good about the decisions. I’ve been considering going for the Supernova Elite status on Pokerstars next year or moving my roll over to cake poker. If I can play enough hands to be SNE it’s worth about 110k in pure rakeback bonuses as well as some free entry into some high buy-in tournies that if I cash can be worth tons and tons of money. So hopefully I can feel good enough about my game to be a winning reg in the 200nl full ring games. I will know for sure around december if I will be going for the SNE. I want to have a 100 buy-in bankroll to be really comfortable playing in the games where I will be against a bunch of regulars constantly. I do feel that I will have an edge on a lot of the super tight and extremely straight forward regs but I know my edge wont be huge and will have to deal with a lot of swings.
Life has been good. Last week I decided that I wanted to go see one of my favorite bands, Brand New, play a show. They had sold out in our local venue so I called a friend and hopped on a bus and went to Seattle to watch them play. The trip was a ton of fun and I love Seattle. Downtown was awesome and it is somewhere I would definitely consider living there.
This is the view from our room. The hotel was very nice and was close to the venue and close to downtown. Was pretty much perfect.
This is a funny display that we saw. She is sending some birthday gift ideas to her boyfriend.
Reina Chilling on the bed. I think we were trying to find food and looking it up on the iPod.
Brand New!!! They were fantastic and played every song that I could have asked for.
That is all for now. My roommate and I are going to be trying to learn how to cook. So I think that I will be posting pictures and reviews of the food that I make. We bought a cookbook so hopefully I wont fail at this to badly.
So I’ve come to write a few updates lately and haven’t really felt like it once I get logged in. I’ll be given a brief update:
-Had an amazing weekend with friends. Coos Bay family came up and hung out and it was fantastic.
-I’m getting more and more into slam poetry. Wish I were talented enough to write it…
-Poker is being good to me last few days. Started this month of great, hit a little 10 buy-in downswing, now I’m climbing back and going to be playing lots. Played 35k hand this month I believe.
-Going to be spending a lot of time in playing poker.
That is all for now, I’m off to bed.
