Long Time No See

Man oh man has it been a long time since I have updated. I haven't updated since the baby was born. Everything went fantastic. He was born on December 28th and weighed 9' 4 ounces. It's been an incredible life changing experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. My wife has been absolutely amazing during the whole process. I don't know how single parents do it. He is now 3 months old and I think the last time we weighed him my wife said he weighed 17 lbs. My poker game has slowed down to a trickle...my wife works from home (we are so lucky) and I watched the baby when she works so that means I only get to play about 3 nights a week if I'm lucky. while I watch him, I have studied a lot more so hopefully this will all pay off. I promise I will update more.

been a while

Greetings....it's been a while since I have posted. I have been real busy with work. I am still banging away at the poker tables nightly. My last 90 days my ROI is 13% and my average profit per game played is $1.11. Now it's a matter of cranking out 500 games a month then increasing that to a 1000. Will be tough with a baby coming....
I am wishing everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and please be safe!
Love to all,
T

ALMOST TIME

I just realized the baby will be here in about 43 days and we have a lot to do. I mean we do and we don't....I can probably knock everything out in a day....the baby will be sleeping in our room but we need to re-arrange everything. I am very excited and can't believe how much it has changed the way I think and act, and how I take care of myself. Since August 23rd I have lost about 65 lbs but want to lose another 40 to 50 more. I have had a physical and blood work and other then being overweight everything else is cool. Cholesterol was a bit high but that should be under control now. Blood pressure was good, heart was good etc. On the poker front I did great Sunday, I profited about $150.00 for the day. When I figure in what I make per game I could make more then $1000.00 a month if I could just get more tables going. 4 is my max and even at 4 I screw up some....I need to find something on multi tabling strategy...like should I start them all at once, that doesn't seem to be the answer because it is hard to play someone heads up, and concentrate on 2 tables that I am on the bubble....It seems like if I play 4 games I try to make 2 turbo's and 2 regular speed. I usually play 2 $6.50 turbo's and 2 $10.00 games at the same time. Monday I went in the hole about $40.00 and last night I went in the hole but only for about $7.00. At the right point Monday night I realized it just wasn't working and I bailed earlier then usual. I think that is a good decision....it wasn't so much that I was on tilt, it was that everything I played was getting hammered. If I had aces, they got cracked, if I caught a set someone had a bigger set of a straight, if I had a straight someone had a bigger one so I finally said screw this and stopped playing. It was happening again last night at the beginning but I finally won the last two so that helped. Tonight I plan on getting home, making supper for my beautiful wife, and hammering the tables again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OMpaFvTOFk

CHARITY POKER EVENT

I played in a charity Poker tournament last night at 3rd Base Sports bar on 6th and Mopac last night. 1st place was a seat at the WSOP next year for one of the $1000.00 buy in no limit tourneys. 2nd place was a buy in to Howard Lederers BBQ charity tournament at the Golden Nugget on Fourth of July weekend. About 90 people showed up and there were around 150 Re-buys. I never did a re-buy though I did 2 ad-ons. I played good poker but was dealt awful cards. I finally caught pocket Aces and went all in and had 3 people call and I won that race and had a good pile. I was then moved to another table and was next to a little old lady who had a middle size stack. By this time we are down to two tables and have 18 people left. I was in the small blind and caught pocket Queens. It had been folded to me so I raised it 3x and the little old lady called. Flop came Q-5-2 rainbow. I go all in and she calls. She turns over a 10-5 of spades. The two was a spade and the turn was a spade and river was another spade and took the pot crippling me to now about 8 Big blinds. I politely asked her....when I raised preflop why did you call with a 10-5? She shrugged her shoulders and said "They were suited". I fought my way to 13th and won a FullTilt mouse pad. On a brighter note, the charity was for helping veterans who suffer from PTSD and we raised $11,000.00 for them so that made me very happy.

Weekend report

Let's get the bad out of the way. This will be the last time I rant about this. The Cowboys are horrible, The entire coaching staff should have been fired in Greenbay and told to take commercial flights back to Dallas. An armed guard should escort them into the locker room at Valley Ranch and stand by them while they pack their stuff. I am done with the Cowboys until Wade Phillips is fired so please someone let me know when that happens. Saturday I didn't play much poker because of the Farmers market and then my wife and I drove to Blanco for a family feast Saturday night. Pork and Green Chili stew. It was so good I made a batch last night for us to eat for the next few nights. Nothing better then pork and green chili stew when it's cold outside. Sunday morning I woke up at 4:00 and drove out to the pasture to deer hunt. It was very cold and I only saw one small doe. I passed the time by listening to Phil Gordon's Little Green Book and Barry Greenstein's Ace On the River over my I-phone. I am not sure how I made it all these years without an I-phone. After getting home and doing some chores I finally got online to play. The first thing I won was a satellite for a seat at the Poker Stars 1/4 Million. I got blasted out of that pretty quickly. Then I started playing 18-man SNG's and ended up making a profit of $83.00 so that made me happy.

Smack Talking

I love when people get pissed off when they are playing me. Because of the new style I have learned, I get to a point in an SNG where if I have 10Big blinds or less, I push. If I have a huge stack and other players are at 10 big blinds or less, I push. You play tight aggressive at the beginning then you push while you have fold equity.  Against recreational players it upsets them sometimes. Then if they see you pushed a not premium hand but still win, they call you names, say you don't know what your doing etc. When I see players upset enough to attack me verbally I think "A: that was a solid move and they don't know how to play so that's good for me, and B: They are on tilt so lets see if I can push them over the edge." If they are already tilted I want to tilt them more so much that they come at me with terrible hands. This is an advantage. In the real world of pro players, I hate Hellmuth and I hate Bobby G. I might actually punch Bobby G in the face if I ever played him and he talked shit...but online I am the king of smack talking. I don't start it but if someone gets mad at me, I try to tilt them worse. It's an advantage.  I  am one of the worst people to verbally attack because my head is full of the worst possible things you could say to another person. Last night I was playing who I guess was a girl...at least their avatar was a girl who was the chip leader at the time. I picked up J-9 Diamonds in the big blind. It was called so I checked. If I would have been raised I would have folded it.  The board flopped 5 of Diamonds, 10 of Diamonds, Jack of Clubs. So I have a flush draw and top pair. I bet 3X and the first person folded but this girl "predy66" called. Next card was a whif and I checked to see what she would do. She bet a minimum amount so I called it. River brought me a 2 of Diamonds so I had a flush. I checked it again hoping she would bet and she bet half pot and I raised it to the size of the pot. Now at this point I am praying she doesn't have a higher flush but I just didn't sense she did. Why did she min call the Turn? Cause she was weak. So I take the pot down and she mucks it and the smack talking starts. I was called a fish, a donkey, how could I play it like I did. The first thing I say is "well your mother is laying in bed with me and she said you bluff a lot." Now she is steaming...I see she is from Mexico so I start in with the Mexican jokes. Are you saving up for a raft to float over here on? what kind of mud does she use for the roof in her house? Does the mud on the roof match her mud floor? Is she not making enough working the donkey show? Every time she got a chance she came at me on the table and she was finally knocked out. She went all in with pocket kings when there were 2 jacks on the board. It was quite obvious to me and everyone else that the other guy had a Jack and 3 of a kind. She then railed it and kept talking smack...usually by this time the administrator comes out and warns me to stop with the smack talking but either he thought my stuff was funny or he was in the bathroom. I can't tell you how many Pokerstar warnings I have gotten....I started busting her chops about how stupid she was for going all in with those kings when everyone knew that guy had 3 of a kind.During the break on the table I looked up her graph on pokerlab. Oh my God she is soooo much better then me! She has profited 1K+ over the last 1000 hands she has played....I haven't even played 1000 hands yet and I am in a serious hole when you look at it that way. I have played about 600 hands and am in the hole $600 or more....but over the last 90 days I am showing a nice little profit. I can't wait to bury that loss over 100 games in the next half a year which I will. I am playing so much better since I decided to take lessons. Of course as a rec player I lost a lot of money...now I am better and am trying to find rec players and take their money. Again my goal is to profit $500 a month. I profited about $200.00 last month so we're getting there. In the mean time as far as smack talking goes my rule is "don't want none, don't start none."  Peace!

LATE REPORT

This weekend's poker was pretty bad. I did concentrate on more large tournaments including the Pokerstars quartermillion Sunday Tournament which are about like hitting the lottery. I think there were 31,000+ people in that one. I need to quit screwing around with such large tournaments and concentrate on the 18 man SNG's. I also need to stop watching the stupid Dallas Cowboys while I am playing because when I see bad things happening to them, it rubs off on my game.  I played about 20 of the 18 man SNG's from Saturday through last night and whiffed on everyone but last night I decided to jump into an 18 man $25.00 + $2.00 and I placed 2nd which gave me about $130.00 back into my bank roll so I am a little in the black for the week. Last night I had an hour live coaching session with Ben Reasons from grinderschool.com. If you don't take lessons and your struggling and losing or even breaking even, I highly suggest taking lessons, downloading hold em manager, downloading a hand evaluator and SNG Wizard. All of these have helped my game. I try to play 5 nights a week and I try to do an hour of video lessons at lunch everyday while I am at work. Luckily we have extra offices with computers so I can go in and watch and not eat which helps my diet. I am now down 60 lbs with another 40 to 50 to go. Saturday nights I don't play poker. Rhonda doesn't have to work so we do the farmers market on saturday, I play a few games in the afternoon, then we go out to eat and come home and watch a movie. Last Saturday night we watched Kick Ass. It was pretty good but I have to say I was a little shocked to hear a little girl who was maybe 10 or 11 call a guy a "cunt". Not like I am old fashion by any means but that was a bit much. Right after the movie Rhonda had some false labor pains...contractions 15 minutes apart. Scared the hell out of me. I thought we were going to have to run to the hospital and have the baby right then. We have about 7 1/2 weeks to go. I have found that when Rhonda is laying in bed, if I put my face on her belly and talk soft to the baby, he hears me and moves around to the sounds of my voice. It maybe the neatest thing I have ever experienced.