“Now don’t ever hear me wrong. These years have passed me by. And I’m still wondering why? Why a man would take his life? I still love you my friend. They look at me now. They know what I’ve done. They can’t promise me a rose garden.”

***

Seattle, USA

I went to Stars cash to just get in the groove of grinding again, so I played 100 NL and 200 NL there for a few thousand hands, never having really played there before. I wanted to get used to Hold’em Manager on the new computer and Stars regs before trying to move up. I didn’t run well or really play that fantastic, and didn’t even end up winner. I started grinding 100 PLO more to learn the game and have been having a lot of fun, although I keep rushing decisions when I play as few as seven tables. I need to get hands in to make money but with PLO you really do need all of your focus.

It’s difficult, since $100.00 doesn’t really get me going right now, but I feel like a huge dog at 1/2 PLO. Still, I probably could learn the game at 1/2, I have hundreds of fucking buy-ins for it, I don’t know why I’m such a nit.

Maybe I could play six tables of 1/2 PLO.

I’m really having fun playing poker again. Raventhon and I wake up and just grind, talk hands, and occasionally wander outside. We’re watching a lot of videos on it. I’m enjoying all of it and having a good time, and feeling really relaxed.

Raventhon and I seriously just get along pretty well and we have our friends over here all the time. They roll us blunts and we talk hands. We put in hours.

It feels like when I started playing, just being back in the U District and playing every day, talking hands and concepts with my friends. I feel like I am getting a grasp on PLO really quickly, just because of all the discussion and videos. I really want to put in hours and learn.

It’s been weird not playing tournaments, but it’s also nice not to be following a schedule every day, burning through tens of thousands between scores, trading coolers with regs, all the while Raventhon laughs and comments on how shitty my hourly really is in MTTs.

I don’t really want to play NLH cash lately, six max is just so tough on Stars and Tilt, there’s a lot of really good regs. I played on fringe websites for so long but being back in the states that’s no longer an option. Thanks to that wonderful fucking crash on my computer I no longer have any of the software for Euro sites, so even if the software ran from the states I can’t play now because their home pages won’t allow me to download it.

I just want to move into what I am interested in. I hope it pays dividends. Hoping to have a pretty cushey existence in Costa Rica to support soon.

At some point I will really need to just get down and grind versus some super tough regulars and work on playing turns and river more effectively to do better at 5/10+ and to increase my winrate.

I’m working on getting some rakeback deals on other sites. You might not see me on Stars soon. I just played ther ein Seattle since rakeback is semi-built-in with their VIP program, but now I am hopefully going to get more.

But yeah, just grinding now, listening to a lot of music, putting in a lot of hands. Hoping to build something.

Currently Listening To:

Oxbow - An Evil Heat
Beneath The Sky - What Demons Do To Saints
Immortal Technique - Revolutionary
Xzibit - Full Circle
Tiesto - Nyana

[img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eyOVJXwz228/Srrh5R1bREI/AAAAAAAAArg/YAG2vGg3Xo8/s400/60554.jpg[/img]

Play 6-max and try to maintain a b/e or positive red line. I will try not to check the amount of $ I won until the end of each week (although I already cheated). This is the HEM window that I plan to be most concerned with:

[img]http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/4685/090309stats.jpg[/img]

It’s going to be me playing mostly 4-6 tables. Good luck to me

Ottawa has been pretty fun so far, I played 3 days of WCOOP this week and unless my 12k stack in the main event turns into something, it was pretty disappointment filled.

The first day(300 PLO rebuy) I just had a ton of mincashes in smaller tournaments, but ended up not really making any deep runs and having just a pretty standard boring/losing tournament session.

The next 2 sessions have been kind of the opposite and I basically got chips in everything.

Thursday I played 22 tournaments with 6 cashes for a small profit, but I had stacks in everything. At one point with a few tables left in each tournament, I was still in the FTP 50 cubed, Stars 109r, FTP 163, Paradise 50 euro rebuy, Stars 109 cubed turbo and among the chipleaders in the 500 rebuy. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The hard drive on my computer died and I lost all my files (poker and otherwise). I had a few important files backed up, but I lost all my databases, pokertracker 2, etc.

Spent nearly 4 hours so far trying to fix, calling Dell for a new OS CD since they never sent me one with the original computer, etc. I will need to buy a hard drive, and try to recover some data with one of those external drive readers.

The new laptop computer I bought doesn’t work properly with my 30″ monitor, but I guess I can still dual monitor with the laptop + 20″ monitor.

I need the break from poker anyway. I did ok last night, but before that it was a 5-day losing streak adding another $500 below allin EV. I don’t have enough money in the account to even 24-table NL($1) with full stacks (would need $2800, ie 24×100 + 400 for topping up). It doesn’t matter anyway since besides being below EV, I am running horrible in every other way as well (ie. oversetted every day etc. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Seattle, USA

…If anyone thinks I’m going to quit playing or quit trying to be truly great at this game because I went home for a little while.

Not even mad about what that one dude wrote. He’s entitled to his own opinion. For real, I just hate it when people don’t want to leave names. I just think that’s the most pussy thing there is.

I’m chilling out for a bit. It’s an investment. I will be going hard for a while I’m sure. If it’s not poker, it’s something, I always need a project, I always need to work on something. That, and oddly, the lights don’t seem to stay on if I don’t pay the bill, so I guess there’s that too.

I came home yesterday, not having gotten much sleep, and just decided to take the day off. I went and saw Surrogate with my friend Ken and some of his friends. I got to try some southeast Asian place in Chinatown before that, that was pretty cool. Just a big communal pot you take from with endless meat and spices going into it. It murdered me but it was great to try.

Surrogate was alright. Price of admission was free so it was hard to beat that, since Ken used to work at the movie theater we went to. It just had a really interesting premise that could have gone so many ways and they do nothing with it. The script is so trite standard Hollywood sci fi lite blockbuster that I found myself able to time my bathroom breaks, because I could tell what every scene was going to entail. “Oh this is the standard reclamation of love despite a cyber world that is depriving our souls! This director seems to be a 7 on the tool scale, so I’ll guesstimate about a 3 minute long douchebag speech on how my current lifestyle is killing everyone and it will probably kill me.”

Some things did asplode, and it was fun at certain points, but there were just so many logic holes that made no sense and drive me insane, and it was just such a cool concept that I felt like they could have done more with it.

Okay, I’m wasting too much time sitting around. I want to go write and get my 1,000 words done. I’ve been efficient with that and have actually written a lot in the last few weeks. The Hombow and Japanese bubble tea combo at this one cafe is fucking sick good, so it gets me there on mornings when I don’t really feel like writing.

I hope it’s raw and emotional as I want it to be. I hope people like it. If not, whatever, I’ll be glad it’s out of my system, that fucking book.

Might go get trashed at Dante’s and watch the game with Mcmatto. Might go to a hookah lounge later, haven’t gone to one in Seattle. Probably will grind till 6:00 AM while Raventhon plays his MMORPG and yells at his e-friends.

Ah it’s 5:00 PM and the Evercrack Queen just woke up. Sup Ben.

Hola, amigos. Been a long time since I rapped at ya. (Great, I’m ripping off [url=http://www.theonion.com/content/columnists/view/anchower]Jim Anchower[/url] .) Anyway, for those of you who were wondering what I’ve been up to and what I’ll be up to, I’ll run it down as quickly as I can:

I’ve been on the online grind the last couple months, but I’ve hit a downswing. I’ve been pressuring myself too win too much, and as a result I’ve been stressed and tilt-prone and not playing well.

I haven’t been playing with enough of a cushion to live behind me, and my monthly nut was unnecessarily high, especially in a city as cheap as Houston. As a result.

I’ve decided the only solution is to take a more proactive effort in curbing expenses. I haven’t put nearly the serious effort I should have into this endeavor, because I’d convinced myself that grinding out volume would just cover for it. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Seattle, USA

Standard variance.

Woke up in a hornet’s nest of old wires in an old development. Houses made during WWII. 70% Asians. 30% black. The only guy I saw with my skin color had three “Born in America” articles on his body. They looked mighty impressive stamped across his beer belly.

The last couple months have been frustrating as hell with poker. Just everything blanking and nothing working. I’m not even beating 200 NL on Stars, lol. Or 400 NL for that matter. I barely have a win rate at 100 PLO. I have a small sample size, since I’ve never played Stars cash till the last couple weeks, but its still annoying. I assumed I’d be winning by now switching to Stars for a while, but oh well.

There’s a good chance I might be able to get some good rakeback deals and move to some other sites, try to really find good tables. Just gotta keep running hands and reviewing sessions and watching videos. I’ve been profitable for a long time and that’s not going change, it’s just funny the swings you go through with professional gambling.

I’m on the phone with some government office for my Mom. I’ve been on hold for ten minutes. Standard variance.

I’m starving.

I was at a black girl’s place last night. I go to get something to drink, and there was nothing to drink but Kool-Aid. I look for something to eat, and there was spare ribs in a container. I LOLed, then felt racist, then laughed harder. I made a joke about it with her. She laughed. I guess I got approved. I guess I shouldn’t feel racist.

You can’t expect white people to be that observant. If you give us a very basic pattern and then you actually stick to it, we’ll be confused and think the stereotype’s true.

Maybe stereotypes exist for a reason? No…

I like fried chicken too. And fried rice. And other dishes that are supposed to be just specific to one nationality. Fucking Seattle, I don’t even get any of it, because Seattle makes you such a west coast loving yuppie flower. I’ve been infected.

I guess the frozen tofu burgers below the ribs don’t fit the stereotype, but meh, if I leave that part out the incident is funnier.

It doesn’t even compute for me. I think it’s growing up in Seattle. All people are just hilarious to me. White people, black, Asians, latinos, we’re all dumbasses on our terms. If you get mad about your specific terms being different than another’s…you’re just silly to me.

I mean, all people do dumb shit. All people can be uptight, all can be geniuses, all can be idiots. We can all be like each other. We all kind of want the same things (food, shelter, sex, a job we somewhat can stand, family, friends)…so I just don’t get it. I really just don’t. So maybe that’s why I make some tasteless jokes sometimes, I just can’t compute it. It’s funny, how stupid all that shit is, the jokes are so absurd you have to laugh, even if they’re against you.

Then you’re so detached. You just laugh every time the different groups have a problem with each other. Because it’s so forced. So “if I threaten the other tribe it will strengthen me with this current tribe, I will be accepted.”

Decides…stoned sex is infitely better than drunk sex. Unless it’s a one night stand in which animal sex is required, in which case the thoughtfulness and numbness that alcohol inspires becomes oddly befitting of the situation.

Getting back to the U District. I need some Chinese food, need to write.

Despite lack of success lately and a number of problems coming up I’m feeling pretty good. Just being around good people, working out in the mornings, taking it slow, not drinking (very often)…I’m feeling good. I’m feeling relaxed.

Currently Listening To:

Drake - The Drizzy Effect
Rammstein - Herzeleid
Royce Da 5′9″ - The Bar Exam 2