Testing out Recording Software

I have some new software and a mic I wanted to test out. I plan on recording my sessions and sharing them here on my blog site. This is my first video which is really just a hand or two of PLO on AP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk3fFbIySmI

OK... I feel like blogging again...

Well the year is coming to an end, and as usual, I haven't been posting consistently. Once again, let's try to change that.

Poker related stuff:
My last entry had me trying to play a ton of SNGs and see how I fared. Well, I think I played about 100-150 sngs with minimal profit so that kind of fell off my radar. But I have continued to work on my tourney game and booked some decent finishes in micro stakes tourneys these past few months. I now have bankrolls on Absolute Poker, Pokerstars, and Full Tilt Poker. I just got my hands on some software to record my sessions. Anyone who is still interested in this blog will be able to watch and listen to me while I play. This will either show how brilliant I am or how much of a donkey I am. Odds are, I'm more of the latter, LOL. I am going to start grinding multiple tournaments on Sundays so those will most likely be the sessions I record.

Personal stuff:
I recently lost about 25 lbs. I quit smoking about 2 years ago and gained 35 lbs. My first goal is to get back down to my pre-quit smoking weight and then just tone up by lifting weights, running, and plyometrics (P90x). I think I play better when I feel healthier so being fit may help my results. What else... I got a promotion at my job. But I still hate working Monday thru Friday so I need to start winning some micro stakes tourneys so I can move up to small stakes, then medium, etc, etc. Working daily is for the birds!

Happy Holidays and Good Luck at the tables!

PS - Viejas Poker Classic II is coming very soon! I will hopefully be there after I satellite in since I can't swing a 1k buyin yet. Be sure to mark it on your calendars since 1st place is guranteed 100K. The WSOP circuit event is coming up in March. Boost those bankrolls because there's always a lot of action when the WSOP comes to town.

Spinning My Wheels

It's been very slow for me in terms of any tournament results in the past couple weeks. I really haven't put in any volume so I can't really expect much I guess. This week I decided to change it up and focus on SNGs and try to play a decent amount of games and see where I stand on the Mars Level Leaderboard ($3 buyins). PokerStars starts their weekly tracking on Sundays so my current stats are:

Games Played - 18
ITM - 9 (1st:5 2nd:3 3rd:1 )
ROI - 64%

I'm not a pro, so you are definitely not going to see me putting up 300-400 sngs in a week like most of the grinders. My goal though is to hit about 40 - 50 by Saturday, maintaining a 35%+ ROI. I also want to see if I can squeeze onto the leaderboard for a little extra bankroll boost. Being in the top 100 would be a nice little screen cap to add to my collection. Until next time...

GL me and See you at the tables!

This is so classic...

Cops Caught Playing Wii During Drug Bust

POLK COUNTY, Fla. (WPIX) - What started out as a full-blown drug raid in a Florida home, turned into an intense bowling tournament that has now left officials utterly embarrassed.

Undercover drug detectives with the Polk County Sheriff's Office had their guns drawn and flashlights beaming when they stormed into the home of a convicted drug dealer this past March.

With a search warrant in hand, investigators rummaged through the home, looking for drugs and stolen property in connection with an ongoing investigation. As the officers were hard at work, others got a Wii bit distracted, literally.

According to News Channel 8 in Tampa, within 20 minutes of entering the home some investigators found a Wii bowling video game and got down to business - throwing strikes and picking up spares between gathering evidence which included shotguns and flat screen TVs.

A wireless security camera, connected to a computer inside the home, recorded all of the officers' activity, including their impromptu bowling tournament. One officer is seen celebrating, jumping up and down, after throwing a strike.

After watching the video, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the incident is an embarrassment and wants an investigation done on the matter.

"That is not appropriate conduct at a search warrant," he told a local news station. "But I am less pleased with the supervision that didn't walk in and say, turn that off. That's what supervision should have done."

I had included a link to the video but it didn't work. Have fun googling it.

Peace.

Man enters and wins Ladies Only event at Borgata

From Wicked Chops Poker...

Abraham Korotki Brings You Today’s Poker News Dump



Ok, so a dude, Abraham Korotki, entered the $300 Borgata Poker Open Ladies Event. Ha ha that’s original. Even worse, he won it, banking some $20,000. Disregard what we think this absolutely proves once and for all about women poker players, it ended up being extra douchey as the lady Korotki beat, Last Woman StandingTM Nicole Rowe, was just diagnosed with breast cancer. According to some friends at the Borgata, Korotki, a lawyer from New Jersey, also acted “like an ass” in the process of winning the tournament.

Deep Run

I played the Pokerstars $2.20 6-handed tournament last night and was able to make the Final Table. Unfortunately for me, I went card dead and one of the big stacks was hyper aggressive. I couldn't pick up any kind of reshove type hands and ended up blinding down to 10BBs with the blinds at 15K/30K. I ended up shoving KcQc vs 3s4s and couldn't run down his pair of 3s on the flop. Overall I am very happy with my play and hope next time I can post a WIN vs just making the Final Table.



GL at the tables.

UFC: 103 Ace vs. The Phenom

Rich "Ace" Franklin has the pleasure of welcoming back the former Light Heavyweight Champion Vitor "The Phenom" Belfort to the UFC cage this coming weekend at the American Airlines Center in Texas. Coming off a great victory over Wanderlei Silva, Ace has an opportunity to continue is journey up the light heavyweight rankings and work towards a title shot that will allow him the chance to avenge his loss to Lyoto "The Dragon" Machida. Personally, I see Rich going into this fight with the same strategy as his last two fights against Henderson and Silva. He will have to use his superior striking ability and conditioning to avoid the clinch and takedowns. If Rich can also dodge all of Vitor's haymakers, this should be a very one sided match. I have no doubt Ace will come up on top this Saturday.

The rest of the fight card will also include some big name fighters like Mirko Cro Cop, Martin Kampmann, Tyson Griffin, as well as mark the return of Frank Trigg back to the Octogon. This fight card makes up for the weak card Joe Silva and the UFC put together for UFC 102.

This is a must see! Don't miss it.

Let's Go Bolts!!!

Being a native San Diegan, I am of course a loyal Charger fan. Rain or shine. Win or lose. Whether we are 0-15 or 15-0. I will always support the Chargers.

Week 1 has us playing on Monday Night Football against one of our biggest rivals: The Oakland Raiders. Here is the ESPN scouting report:



Every year I say this and this year will be no different.

We are not only going to win the Division, but we will also be going to the playoffs.

Chargers FTW!

Labor Day Weekend

I had an awesome Labor Day Weekend. We had a family dinner at my parent's house Friday evening and my mom made one of my favorite dishes: ox tail stew. While we were down by my parent's house we hit up a home decor store, Kirklands, and picked up a nice littel 4 piece set for our foyer. Regular price was $159 but we got it for $89! Whoo-hoo for Labor Day sales. Saturday morning the wife took me to see Gamer. Sunday we spent the day at Glorietta Bay with the family. We grilled up some dogs and burgers and just enjoyed a day at the park/beach. And finally on Monday, I had a great morning run and just enjoyed relaxing for the rest of the day. My mother in law came by in the afternoon and we all just watched some movies on HBO: The Mist and Death Race.

As for poker, I played some micro tourneys on Pokerstars. Nothing special, but one of these days I am going to ship more than one of these tournaments in one day. Once that happens, I will be able to move up to small stakes tourneys. Until then, here are the results of my micro tourneys this past Labor Day weekend:

$3.30 buyin, 2590 players - Finished 271st for $6.99
$2.20 buyin, 3880 players - Finished 529th for $3.10
$2.20 buyin, 90 players - Finished 7th for $7.65
$3.30 buyin, 2902 platers - Finished 34th for $16.55
$2.20 buyin, 351 players - Finished 15th for $7.03
$3.30 buyin, 3009 players - Finished 99th for $12.64

ROI = 227%

GL at the tables.

Old Screen Cap

I have a folder on my desktop named 'Poker Screen Caps'. I was going through it because its been a while and I really don't take that many caps. Now that I want to start blogging more, I wanted to go through and organize my inventory as I will try to take more screen shots and save HHs for my upcoming blogs. I came across an old screen cap very near and dear to my heart. I just realized I have never posted it before.

If anyone has ever wondered what this looks like... here you go.

Welcome to Coolerville

I played a late session last night while watching 30 Days of Night (great movie by the way). One of the tourneys I got into was a small 122 runner $10 Bounty on AP. I played great and caught some good cards in the early and middle stages of the tourney. When we hit the Final Table, I had about 28BBs. I went card dead and when the blinds went up to 500/1000 I found myself severely short stacked. I picked up AA OTB and got the money in preflop 3 ways. Well, from the title of this post, I am sure you can tell I didn't win the hand and triple up like I was supposed to. Here is a screen cap from the HH:

Can you say drawing dead? What's really gross is that this isn't the first time a player with KK has flopped quads against my AA. Oh well.

Until next time, good luck at the tables.

Uneventful Night

I logged on last night and played 2 SNGs on Stars, 2 donkaments on AP, and a donkament on Stars. The SNGs were pretty uneventful and I took 3rd in both.

The Stars mtt was a $2 micro and I didn't take it that seriously. Late into the 1st hour, I was short stacked with like 800 chips in the BB and was dealt QTo. I think UTG min raised to 200 and like half the table called, so I wished everyone good luck and shoved my micro stack in and got called by 5 players, LOL. I ended up winning the main pot by flopping a Q and went into the 2nd hour with a 4k stack or basically 40BBs. I semi-bluffed a few pots, but after that as I was totally card dead wasn't able to make it to the money when I shoved 15BBs with AQs and got called by KJo and he spikes a J. Standard.

I played the AP $5 Sniper and a random $5 6H no guarantee tourney. The Sniper started off well for me. I quadrupled my starting stack of 1500 chips by the end of the first hour. But then I hit some coolers in the 2nd hour and got blinded out when I took a trip to the card graveyard. Standard.

The $5 6H tourney was classic though. I played well and made some big hands to remain in the top 10 for the first to 2 hours of play. Late into the 3rd hour, I negative slow play myself out to the rail. My table was 5 handed at the time and it was a family pot with me in the SB with QTo. The Flop: Ad Kh 5h. I checked, as did every except OTB. He bet pot and I flatted as did the BB. The Turn: Jd So I hit broadway and decide to check. BB goes into the tank a bit and bets 1/2 the pot. OTB instantly calls and I 'just' call also. The River: Xd The river card completed a runner backdoor flush but I didn't put any of my opponents on a backdoor draw. Maybe 2 pair or a busted heart draw. So I lead at the pot for about 3/4 value. BB shoves over the top of me and the OTB re-raises all in. Now I wish I had just checked but my stack size and the size of the pot demanded I call. This could easily be a 2 pair vs. a set vs. my broadway. So I call. Well, both players hit the backdoor flush but the OTB player had the best of it with the KdQd. I knew I should have re-raised on the turn. Negative slow play kicks me in the but yet again. Standard.

Until next time.

Marc Davis aka PeopleMover aka OMGshipit

I am a huge fan of Marc Davis and have been following his blog for over a year now. He is a Heads Up No Limit Pro out of Florida. Anyhow, he made it onto a feature table during the 2009 WSOP Main Event and locks horns with non-other than Mr. Phil Hellmuth himself. Here are links to the youtube clips of PeopleMover's tv debut on ESPN:

Forward to 3:00 for this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frCEX5HEeZA&feature=PlayList&p=46C6174BF1B5277D&index=41


And here is a link where Hellmuth pays to see PeopleMover's hand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpK0SiMm3ok&feature=PlayList&p=46C6174BF1B5277D&index=43

Time to start posting again...

I have been grinding on Pokerstars trying to get a bankroll going. My last post is of a screen pic of me FTing a micro tourney. Well the story behind that is: my buddy transferred me $1 and I started playing those 10 cent 360-man sngs. Well, I won the second sng I played and that was for like $8. I then took a shot at a $2.20 mtt and was able to FT that. Since then I have been grinding the $1.20 sngs and taking a few shots here and there at micro mtts. I was able to grind my $80 micro bankroll into about $140 and then I decided to take a shot at a $5.50 mtt. I was able to cash out in 16th place and I have now officially broken the $200 bankroll mark.

I will start posting more screen caps of my tourney finishes and just drop some win/loss stats just so I can say that i actually blog.

Hopefully I can find some other interesting things to post about as well.

Until then... good luck at the tables.

Watch Out Donks!

The Miz now has a micro bankroll on Pokerstars.



Ship.

P90X Training - Day 4

One of my new year's resolutions was to exercise more and keep the pounds off. Well, many of you may have seen the P90X infomercial on late at night and written it off as another work out/lose weight gimmick. Well, I am a believer that EVERY diet plan and work out regimen marketed to the public WORKS. Yes, if you went out and bought Buns of Steel and followed the program to the tee and ate properly, you would have buns of steel. I have tried many different work out programs (I don't like to diet) and have always lost 15 - 25 lbs. depending on how motivated I was. My problem is, these programs are about short term results and I always gained the weight back. I feel P90X not only works you out but provides you with many different alternatives to just lifting weights or running that make exercising fun and challenging. P90X is a 78 day program and I am currently on day 4 today. Let me tell you, my body is in some major pain, but it just reminds me how hard I am working. Makes me feel great! I weighed myself on Monday and I weighed 232 lbs. Did I mention I am only 5'9"? Ya, I am definitely not in shape and actually on my way to obesity I think, which is another good reason to start this program. So along with poker content, I will also post updates on my weight loss progress. Hmmmm... maybe I should include before and after pics? Nah... too embarassing, plus I don't want to disgust anyone and discourage them from reading my blog. I'll just post stats and stuff. I guess that means I should re-measure and weigh myself regularly.

Until next time... GL at the tables and be healthy!

February 2009

Well, I put in a ton of volume for mtts in January and did pretty well. However, what should of been a +$400 or so month ended up being more like only +$150 due to me booking some losing sessions at the cash tables. My goal for February will be to stay away from the cash for now and concentrate on my tournament game.

The WSOP circuit event is coming to Harrah's Rincon in March and I plan on playing maybe 2-3 events. If I do well and win some decent coin, I will definitely give some of the bigger buy-in tourneys a shot hoping to make enough to buy into the 5k main event. I am estimating buy-ins to be about $800, and right now I have about $220. So I have some work to do. I have no doubt I will reach that goal as long as I stick to mtts and not let the variance at the cash tables knock me back.

I am also happy to report that I now have a micro bankroll on PokerStars. My buddy, M4NT1S, sent me $1 and I have been grinding the 10 cent 360-man tourneys. As Phil Hellmuth would say: If it weren't for luck, I'd win 'em all! LOL These tourneys are very soft. Maybe once in awhile I will run into a decent player but its not that often as the play usually mimics that of a freeroll. I have played a ton of these and have cashed in many. Once again, my bankroll should be up to about $30 right now, but its really more like $14 due to variance at the cash tables. Yes, I tried grinding the .01/.02 NL tables and lost a lot of my bankroll due to suckouts and just generally horrid play. So my rule on Absolute Poker will also stand on PokerStars. No cash tables! (for now at least) I promised the M4NT1S that the first "real" tourney I ship that I would give him 40%. I don't want to let him down, so my primary goal is to build the bankroll so I can start playing the $1 and $2 micro tourneys. These are actually pretty large on PokerStars and 1st place usually wins about $400. Now that would be a bank roll booster for sure!

Until next time... GL at the tables!

Goals...

Wow, 2009 is in full swing and I am already not following through on one of my resolutions which was to post more often. Let me start off with my goals for 2009:

Personal:

1) Spend more quality time with my family. Poker is a big part of my life, but my family is BIGGER! I am going to plan more family trips and activities instead of planning out my tournament schedule. My wife used to hate me playing poker all the time but we came to a compromise and I don't want to take advantage of it. She has been really supportive and understanding. So I need to do my part in be more involved as a husband and father; even though I am a degen, lol.

2) Just like everyone else, we all would like to lose some weight or maybe tone up a bit. Well, ever since I got married 8.5 years ago, my weight has slowly climbed higher along with my age. I don't have problems losing weight once I start working out. My problem though is keeping it off! So am going to sign up at the local gym and stick to it all year (I hope).

3) Focus more at work. I think I kick ass at my 7 - 3:30 job, but I am not pushing myself like I used to. I am sort of just coasting. So I am going to make it a point to work harder and really give it 110% until I either win the lottery or become a poker pro.

4) This one's kind of cheesy, but I also need to pay more attention to my pets. I have two little pomeranians who need more attention from me and the family. I was thinking about it the other day... we have had them since they were puppies. They are 8 years old in human years. Pomeranians live to about 12! Wow! It's a crazy feeling knowing the dogs I love may be gone in the next 3-4 years. I think I owe it to them to pay more attention to them.

...and now for poker goals:

1) Focus on learning more about the game! My tournament game has gotten a lot stronger but it needs to continue growing. Same goes for my cash game play. In order to improve on these aspects of poker, I have subscribed to a poker training site: PokerXFactor (PXF). Hopefully I will be able to post some big scores in the future that I can attribute to subscribing to PXF.

2) Volume, volume, volume! There is only one way to get better. That is to continue to play, play, play and play! I am going to make a schedule so that my family knows my "poker days" which will be days I focus primarily on tournaments. I have already gotten the ok to make Sundays my "Live" play day which has worked out nicely.

3) Make money! Don't forget, I am a micro stakes player...errr... well maybe I am a small stakes player now. But either way, I have a limited bankroll. My overall goal is to have a 50% ROI(online) by December 31st of this year. That's alot, but you know what, you have to set big goals to accomplish big goals. This will include sit n gos, tournaments, and cash games. I don't have a "Live" bankroll so I can't set this type of goal yet. Hmmm... maybe I should set a goal to create a "Live" bankroll?


Well... that's all I've got for now.

Good Luck at the Tables!

Happy New Year and Hello 2009!

Ok, so I haven't blogged in a LONG time. So obviously one of my new year's resolutions will be to blog on a more consistent basis. So there's no better time to start this new trend than with right now.

Let me start off by saying: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The new year has been awesome so far. My 8-8 San Diego Chargers just won their wild card game and move to round 2 to face off against the Steelers next Sunday. Our city is going nuts right now and rightfully so. I just hope some of our key players can heal up from their injuries because traveling to Pittsburgh and winning there is going to be extremely tough.

As for POKER:

Something remarkable happened to me on January 3rd. I was grinding as usual at the .25/.50 NL games on Absolute Poker and I was dealt AdKd. I raised it preflop and got 3 callers. The flop came down: K K K Yes you're reading that correctly, I flopped quads. We all checked the flop and the turn was a 8. I was thinking great, no value on flopped quads, so we all checked around and the river brougth another 8. Now the first player bet $4. I was thinking perfect, maybe I will get some value out of this hand since the board read KKK88 which is a full house for everyone. I raised it to $20.50. The player after me called, but the original bettor moved all in for his remaining $92. I immediately re-raised all in and the player behind me called.

My jaw dropped the second a message box appeared on my screen, it read: ATTENTION PLAYERS: THE BAD BEAT JACKPOT HAS JUST BEEN HIT. WINNING PAYOUTS WILL BE CALCULATED AFTER ALL CURRENT HANDS HAVE BEEN PLAYED OUT. Holy crap! I was the winning hand in the bad beat jackpot on AP!! Whoo-Hoo! My quad Kings beat my opponents quad 8s. I had just won more money than I could ever imagine, and it was while I was playing POKER!

So, my new year was quite memorable and I look forward to setting some new poker goals for myself as well as personal goals. I will talk more about these new goals in my next post. I just wanted to say thanks for reading and look forward to a lot more content in 2009.

Happy New Year and good luck at the tables.