- Taxes = suckage

College was great. Didn't really have to pay squat on taxes. Jobs that can cover 1/2 of your taxes are great. I don't have one of those. I need to play more games than I've ever played in my life this next month if I'm going to have enough to cover the amount the Fed has to have. Odd side note: I find it funny that even the gov't is doing everything it can to stop me from making money at a skill game they still want a huge cut of my income. Here's a thought - regulate it. Make your money from it, too. That way, more people come back to the games I play and we're both happy. Gov't and Fatty can both be happy together.

In other news, I just started listening to Randy Pingrey's trombone blog (google it, people) and it's got tons of great sound clips from his gigs and personal recordings. Nostalgia aside, I really miss that guy.

Oh and one last thing - some dude accused me of being a bot today. "Bots" are programs set up to play a solid push/fold strategy and basically allow the person that designed it to make money without doing anything. I don't know who the guys was or why he assumed I was a bot (to my knowledge we'd never played against each other before, but I could be wrong), but it was kind of funny.

- Comin' at you with crazy fists!

Good news! All that sucking over the last 400-500 games has caused a very nice leak to pop up - light shoving went bye-bye. That is to say, that I was allowing myself to get waaaay too close to blinding off (really easy to do if with only a 10 blind starting stack) and not shoving nearly wide enough in late position in mid-blind levels. Was kind of getting tired of just blaming the bad beats (of which there have been many) and read a few late-game shove articles and tried to figure out what was going on. It's been tough because normally I could check the majority of my plays in an ICM calculator, but since I don't have Windows on this Mac I can't run any of the programs. Boo hoo.

Gonna really plug for the rest of the month to try to turn it around. With some luck I might have enough $ to purchase the Windows software. Really didn't want to pay full price, so if someone knows of a good way to skirt it w/o actually stealing, I'm all ears.

- These are still fun!

Hey yo -

The hyper-turbos are still going well. Well, not financially so to speak, but they're a welcome change to last year's grind. I really need to get some Windows running on my Mac so that I can start running hands in SngWiz (ICM program) and check my shove/calls.

The variance is certainly a kick in the chops, but it's a lot easier to stomach knowing you have to really run bad to lose your shirt. I mean, I'm not the greatest player to ever play these, but if I wasn't having so many key bubble hands get cracked for the last few days I would be at least break-even. The average players (and regs) are just so weak it's awesome. Plus, I can hammer out about 100 games in 4 hours or so. With any luck, I can run 2-3 hour sessions and shoot for 150 per day...that way I can (random aside - I've got Diana Krall's rendition of Ellington's "I'm an Errand Girl for Rhythm" playing and it's distracting the hell out of me) keep up the grind without as much as variance as year's past (I hope).

Ok, that's all.

Two posts in a week?

Hi. I like Trader Joe's. Just sayin.

An open letter to the $28 super-turbo regs on full tilt:

Hi guys,

If you're all playing strictly for rakeback, congratulations on getting a bit more volume than me. We're all impressed with the fact that you can eke out a 3-5% profit. Here's a quick tip from someone that hopes to make a bit more than that per game - play a few less tables and avoid sitting with every other motherflippin' reg at the level. Now I'm not talking drop down to less than 8 tables, but something more reasonable than 20 at a time should help. Also, think about NOT signing up for a table that has 4 regs (and only 4 regs) in the lobby. I mean, you're just pissing equity to each other.

On second thought, do what you want. If I compile enough stupid stuff from all of you, I'll just become a contributor to Yard's new blog involving all the stupid crap reg's do.

Weeee.

January already?

Hi. You don't read this blog for the consistent updates. You don't read this blog because it's even the slightest bit interesting. You don't read this blog because you want to stay "in touch" or something. You read the blog because potatoes are cool.

With that said, let's move to the new year.

I got pretty burnt out on the whole 180 man grind thing toward the end of the year. It wasn't like I suffered a huge massive downswing or anything (it was pretty small, really). I just kind of got tired of getting so deep consistently and following it with a blunt smack upside the head of crap variance. What can you do to counteract that? Would you answer it by switching to a game with even more variance? Why not!

I'm playing on full tilt instead of pokerstars because they've got these sweet super-turbo sngs. You start with 300 chips (10 blinds) and 9 players. Bad ass. People fly out of them so fast it's crazy. Most of the low limit guys have no clue about shove/calling ranges so it's just a game of analyzing general shove spots w/ 5-10 blinds most of the time. Plus, it's easy to squeak into the money if you're really short (most guys just think it's worth their time to poke that KTo into the pot after the big stack has already pushed and the shorty has 50 chips. sweet action jackson)

I'll try to update as the volume increases, but right now I'm only playing 4 tables at a time and reloading (average around 16-18 tables/hr). With the rakeback kicked in, I should make somewhere around $2/gm at the $28s and more as the roll increases. I figure if I can slog through 2k games this month, I should be grinding 45s exclusively by Feb. Let's hope, at least.

In other news, the holidays were freaking amazing. I was home for a week and a half (with a lot of snow), had a 3 night gig (about damn time I got some more trombone work), and enjoyed seeing the family. My girlfriend bought us tickets to a St. Louis Blues hockey game in St. Louis just before New Years and I got to go to another Blues game here in LA just last night. New Years in StL was pretty sweet, too. Oh, and I worked the World Series of Beer Pong tourney in Vegas again this year. We worked a lot more hours this year, but it was a complete blast (and I ended up chopping the $150 Caesar's nightly for about $1300 with my buddy Brian).

Anyway, thank God the holidays are over. As fun as they were, I'm a total fatty again. Let's work on that...I hear they have this new Taco Bell diet.