- New Goal

After looking at my stats for awhile, I think it's easily attainable for me to reach 17k games played this year. There are about 5 and a half months left in 2009 and I really didn't play too much in Jan. and May. With about 9500 games already in the bag, I'm going to shoot for 20,000 total. I won't get much volume in August because of an awesome chance to go camping at Zion Nat'l Park in Utah for a few days with some buddies (who are then hanging out in LA with us for a few more), but Sept on should be good (sans a wedding in October).

I figure if I get 1k more in July that'll leave me with only 9500 or so for the last 5 months. Admittedly, 1900 games per month will be a definite stretch - especially when I hit the inevitable "run bad" streak - but I figure having a game oriented goal in mind will be better than a profit one. Now that I'm mixing in $60 18s/45s, I hope to average somewhere between $4-5/gm for the rest of the year (I'd love for it to be closer to 6, but let's be realistic and happy with the low end, fatty). Maybe we'll say goodbye to these student loans by Christmas after all. Maybe.

- Vacation #2

I was expecting humid, muggy Wisco summer weather, but it's been perfect since getting back yesterday. There are actual clouds in the sky (not smog or haze) and seeing grass/trees/flowers that can grow naturally without a massive aqueduct/reservoir system is refreshing. LA is a great place to live for awhile, but there's not way in hell I'll live there for the rest of my life. Besides, the DQ up here has some Girl Scout Tagalong cookie blizzard special going on. Random win? I think so.

My website should be up and functional relatively soon as I'm spending much of my time here figuring things out and annoying Yardledoo. Not having to play poker for awhile is awesome.

- The Jazz is all about the Swings.

And so is the poker. So, after the terrible frustration that was May (yeah, yeah, we all know I ran bad for about 1/2 of it and played profitable, but not nearly stellar poker for the rest of it), June became a welcome surprise. Without a doubt, it was the best month of results I've ever had. I played really well, but definitely ran very well in important spots for the majority of my playing time. I mean, when you're on the final table of a 180 man w/ 65k stack and you shove KQs at 3k/6k blinds from the button and get called by AA and AK and still win? That's special. Did nothing wrong, just got lucky in some key spots AND held when I had the best hand in many places, too. I'm not going to really talk numbers on the month, but I will say that I made more profit-wise in June than all of 2008. Sweet.

Still wish I could've gone to South Carolina, but by deciding to stay in LA, I earned enough to get a sweet new laptop and an awesome bed. I feel like a big boy now. Seriously, I've been sleeping on a freakin big air mattress since I can remember (grad school...2006 to present). Last night was the best night of sleep I've had in years. No kidding.

I think the 180s will continue to be a pretty nice cash-cow at these stakes. It's weirdly relaxing to play games that are so far within your bankroll that there's .01% chance of going broke (arbitrary stat for the blog post: check). I mean, I'm still gonna keep playing $12 180s and $27/35 18/45 mans for quite some time. Inevitably I'll have another month like May again and hopefully it'll be less of a psychological drain as it was last time. Just looking over my sharkscope graph from when I was playing 9-man games (notably less high-variance than mtt-sngs) I noticed several 500-1k game break-even/losing stretches. So, I figure if I can at least play decent poker through the next one, it should last no more than that. Ok, no more talk of May from now on. Good riddance to that bastard of a month.

4th of July is tomorrow. Sweeeet. Note: it's actually referred to as 'Merica Day by James and me. PBR and brats and blowing stuff up. Be sure to celebrate the birth of your country by blowing up a small part of it.