Luckbox

Shipped a freeroll given by raketherake today. I have never played their monthly freeroll before even though I have qualified every month. By chance I noticed I had a free ticket so i registered yesterday. Today came along, and I did not remember that I registered. By chance I opened cake 5 minutes after the tourney started, and proceeded to run like God. It didn't take skill. It took all the luck in the world. I hope I didn't use up all my luck for the next two months on the dumb turbo tourney. Anyways, I hardly ever play tourneys, and didn't plan to have any profit from tourneys over these 60 days, so its a nice addition.

UFC fights yesterday were good, but not great. An abnormal amount of fights went to decision, which I wouldn't have minded had their been alot of skillful fighting. Meh. BTW, shogun looked horrible. He will get crushed by rampage in March. Absolutely crushed.

I forgot to mention that I saw Gran Torino last week. Loved the crap out of it. Clint Eastwood plays a similar character that he always plays, but I love that character...sooooo, it was great.

Weigh in, Jan 9th - 187 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 18th - Cash Games $4,184.90 + Tourney profit $896 = $5080

Decent session

Hello all! This will probably be short. Today is Friday, which means sushi! Sushi is my one eat out meal a week. I'm excited.

Yesterday was boring, as has been most of this week. Absent BJJ, I really don't have any other social activities that take me out of my house, especially because I'm watching my weight and going out to eat and drink is very limited. Blah. I will try and go to BJJ and Monday and see how my neck feels.

Poker went well yesterday. I played one 1100 hand session and got up 4 buy ins. Then played a late night 1k hand session and lost 50 bucks. So all in all still a pretty big win. The tables will be good all weekend, and I intend to play a decent amount. It does depend on what happens tomorrow though. The UFC fights are at 1pm, so it could end up that I don't play a hand of poker tomorrow. But until then...

Oh PS, there will be no weigh in this week. Once a week weigh ins are a little too much, so I'll do them every two weeks.

Weigh in, Jan 9th - 187 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 15th- $4,041

Up and Down, UFC, Dumbledore and more

It has been a few days. Sorry. Lazy has creeped up on me again due to a few setbacks. No matter.

Lets start with poker. Last I posted I believe was Saturday. I played a minimal amount of poker Sunday because I was lazy and the tables really weren't what I expected them to be. It seems Sundays really aren't as good as they used to be, as most regulars are playing all day. Thursdays through Saturdays are where its at. I talk alot about game selection and not playing bad tables because I play on a smaller site which doesn't have the massive amount of tables running like Pokerstars and Fulltilt. However, the tables that do run are typically much better, fishier, etc...your own personal atm. The tables have been just as bad or worse, however, at my site since the new year. I believe game selection can on average change your winrate by 2-3ptbb, which for me would swing my hourly rate by $56 an hour. Instead of making $120 an hour, I would make around $60, depending. So, if you had a choice, to play 6 hours a day versus nit regs, fighting the cooler v cooler war, or to play 2 hours versus fish, and make the same amount of money...I think the choice is clear. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to make 30k in this manner. I therefore have a choice to make in the near future. If the tables do not get better by the end of the month, I will take a serious look into playing on other sites. It will be difficult, because depositing a full bankroll on to a random site is not easy these days (thank you US Government), but necessary if things don't turn around. Anyways.... Sunday I played 1k hands and made $167. I quit early to finish rereading the Deathly Hallows. I finished it that night, terribly sad for a second time that my Harry Potter was over again.

And by coincidence, Monday was my worst day in a long time. My neck/back felt horrible in the morning. Worse than the actual day I hurt it. I skipped BJJ, and played a decent amount of poker, and set a couple of personal records. I have never before had a session like this one. I lost about 5 buy ins, which is my stop loss. I have probably had only 3-4 of these in the past 6 months of playing. Not only did I lose 5 buy ins, but not once during the session did I get stacked. Not once. How the heck do you lose 5 buy ins without getting stacked? I really don't know. Maybe my 29% wwsf is an indicator, LOL. That means only out of all the times I saw a flop, I only won 29% of those pots. That is horrible. It felt as if every single time I cbet, they would float. Every time I looked them up they had the nuts, etc etc. The biggest pot I lost was 60bbs. The second biggest was 50bbs. After that, I didn't lose a pot over 30bbs, but yet lost 5 buy ins. Surprisingly, I handled it very well. Didn't even think twice about it, and wouldn't have played many hands differently. It did however derail alot of my hope for this month. Losing 1k left me at only 2300 profit for the month, almost halfway through. UGH. It puts into perspective how much you can do right, yet see negative results, which as a poker player is something you have to absolutely handle without a second thought, or you'll end up breaking alot of mice, keyboards and drywall. Seriously.

Luckily, I turned it around yesterday and won 4 buy ins. Plus $100 bonus for rakeback, and I am only down 100 from that awful session. If the tables continue bad, I would be ecstatic to pull of a 10k month. And then hope next month the tables turn good and I can play alot of 400nl in addition to 200nl.

I have yet to play today, but will put in some hands after I am finished with this blog. As for Harry Potter, I sadly put him back on the bookshelf today, and will wait until this summer to reread any more books. I'll probably reread the half blood prince right before the movie comes out.

On the fitness end of things, healthy eating is right on schedule. Unfortunately exercise is not. With my neck/back muscle the way it is, I probably will not go to BJJ until this Friday, or next Monday. Its some stupid random back muscle that appears to be connected to both arms, neck and head. So every time I move it hurts...bad. I hope its just strained and not pulled. If it comes down to it, I will start going to a gym and doing cardio that requires a minimum amount of arm and head movement. What is this cardio you ask? Freaking running. I hate running for the sake of running more than anything, and will avoid it at all cost. However, my weight goal seems to be the one thing I can actually make at the end of two months, so if I have to I will run. I will run, and I will curse and whine the whole time, but I'll run hard :)

As for fun, I have 3 Saturdays in a row of UFC/MMA fights coming up. It's going to be awesome! If any of you that are reading this wanna come over, I will be ordering all the fights the next three Saturdays and everyone is invited: the 17th UFC 93, the 24th Affliction, and the 31st UFC 94. I had a party for UFC 92, which turned out a good amount of people and was alot of fun. Hopefully alot will show up the next three Saturdays.

As for the fights, I am very excited to see shogun fight. Only recently have I really become a fan of UFC, and Shogun has been out for a while. In addition, I automatically root for any Brazilian as I am half Brazilian. Or half monkey as some friends affectionately put it. Shogun fights this Saturday, then next Saturday Fedor takes the ring. Argued to be the best all around fighter, this chunky russian is amazing. My friend kept saying Fedor is the best, so I finally watched alot of his fights on youtube. Fedor might be the best...seriously. Then the grandaddy of grudge matches will be on the 31st, and I hope to god that George St Pierre kicks the living crap out of BJ Penn. We will see.

Hope all is well with everyone.

Weigh in, Jan 9th - 187 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 14th- $3,300

The Weekend..yay!

Its late Saturday night. I was overall, very worthless today. Yesterday was my one fun night of the week, and I took advantage. Went to sushi for lunch, which was a nice treat, and completely stayed within the bounds of healthy eating. I then played a really disappointing session where I got up 2 and a half buy ins within 15 minutes, and then proceeded to make some questionable plays based on my attention level being below optimal, and I was suddenly stuck a two buy ins a half hour later. I refocused, and got back to even then quit after a total of 1600 hands.

I met my two good friends that live here in Fort Collins and we went out, first to a bar to prime, then to the Jason Boland concert. Similar to last weekend I had a great time. We drank a good amount of beer, listened to some very loud, good country music, then left a little intoxicated. Ok, so maybe more than a little. We tried to go into a small bar that was close to the place where we saw a concert, but unfortunately the door man thought he saw the three of us swaying about through the window. Lies. So we went to another bar and didn't even order a drink, but instead called a taxi. I am extremely proud of myself for avoiding the street meat that pre2009 Jonathan would've totally eaten. 2009 Jonathan walked right on by, even though it smelled delicious.

The best part of the night for me, and I swear the cabbie was tipped off by someone, was when we stepped into the cab and the driver said "Lets play trivia...pick from these categories: Sports, Harry Potter....!?!!!!???!!?!?!?" "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!??!?" HARRY POTTER!!!!!!! I CHOOSE HARRY POTTER!!!! I freaked out...which I can firmly blame on miller light. Had I been sober I wouldn't have freaked out, rather been mildly excited. So I spent the whole ride home answering Harry Potter questions as best I could while my friend Bob sat in the back shaking his head. Oh well, I was happy.

This morning didn't turn out to be such a happy time. My neck still really hurts from BJJ on Thursday, and my head hurt too. I watched football for most of the day, and then played a short 1200 hand session tonight that went really well. I ended up around 3 and a half buy ins in 1200 hands. I don't think I'm running amazingly, but I'm not running bad either. I do believe that this nice run has led me to believe I can make my goal only playing the amount of hands I'm playing, which is false. Though I'm on course right now, I won't run at 6ptbb/100 for the next 50 days. Its just not going to happen. I need to play more hands. I could've played 3k hands minimum today, since the tables were really good. I need to pick it up.

I'm looking for hands to post right now but really haven't found anything all that interesting. Ill have to remember to save some hands after each session so I can start posting them.

I plan to play alot tomorrow, then not so much on Monday or Tuesday as the tables will most likely be very bad.

One of the hardest things for me the past year has been how to explain poker to friends that ask, or to family members. Every poker blog I've read say the same thing: Its impossible to explain it in a way people will understand right away, or in a way that doesn't sound demeaning. I know alot of poker pros that actually lie when people ask them what they do, simply to avoid talking poker. This next week I'm gonna try and come up with a good explanation, that doesn't sound haughty totty, about why its difficult to explain poker. But for now, I'm going to go finish the Deathly Hallows, for the second time.

Weigh in, Jan 9th - 187 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 10th- $3,373.80

First week at an end

A couple observations about this past week.

- I didn't play half as many hands as I predicted I should to reach my end goal.
- I don't think it was prudent to play anymore than I did because of the bad tables.
- The tables will be better in the near future.
- I ate healthy and in good proportions.
- I went exercised much more than I have in the past.
- For the amount of poker I played, the profit I made is above expectation.

I'm decently happy with the past week. All in all I stuck to a decent schedule, though falling way behind in amount of hands played, I still made enough profit to easily keep me in line to reach my goal.

Yesterday I went to BJJ at noon, and stayed after for Randori. At the end of the class we rolled a little and I tweaked my neck. I thought it wasn't that bad and stayed for Randori and did something awful to my neck, though hopefully it will feel better by Monday. We worked on triangles most of the day, which didn't have much of an effect on my neck. I think it was the pressure that is placed on your neck when someone is pulling you down while you are in there guard while I was simultaneously pulling up. Whatever, in terms of exercise I probably haven't worked this hard since high school sports....translation, I worked this hard a million years ago.

The tables were once again bad during the day, so I just hung out until the National Championship game. A few friends came over to watch the game. I hate Tim Tebow. And his team won...blah. I have planned to only drink once a week, but I did end up having a few beers last night. Amazingly it was easy to only have a few and not go overboard. Today will be my one night out, and I will be taking advantage. Jason Boland is playing at the Aggie, and should be a good time.

Late last night I played a short session and was pleased at how good the tables were at night. It was typical of how my site usually is. I made 3 and a half buy ins in about 1100 hands and called it a night. My numbers on pokertracker are slightly screwed up right now because of some errors that occurred last night. Out of my 1100 hands, there were 200 some errors. While the numbers in my general tab were accurate, the graph wouldn't display some 400 hands from last night. So I tried to re import and see if it could pick more up, not being worried about the program duplicating any hands because it never does. Sigh, it did, so now my general tab is showing 500 more dollars of profit that I didn't make, yet my graph is still stuck minus the original 400 hands. I don't know what is wrong with it and I don't think I can fix it.

Here are my numbers....subtract 500 dollars and 400 hands from the totals. So my profit is about $2600. I think you have to click the picture to see the whole thing. As of yet I havent figured out how to make my blog wider to display the whole picture.


Here is my 2nd weigh in. Not bad, not amazing. Standard I think. I also think I'm going to start weighing in every two weeks as opposed to once a week.





Weigh in, Jan 9th - 187 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 8th- $2,608.59

A breakeven win

For those of you that are seeing this blog for the first time on my Facebook notes, you might have missed the first few blogs which are essential to understanding what the heck I am talking about. The whole point of the blog is to follow my 60 day challenge that started on Jan 1st to make 30k at poker and lose 20lbs. I suggest going back and at the minimum reading the first blog called "The Plan", which you can find by either clicking on my notes and scrolling to the bottom, or going to my actual blog HERE

Yesterday was uneventful. Woke up, read, stared at my dog, read, wrestled my dog, read, at lunch, checked the awful tables running, became grumpy, stayed grumpy, then I went to my first intermediate BJJ class at night.

Great experience. I left feeling like I did when I went to my first beginner class back in September. Exhausted, light headed and ready to pass out. But it was a good feeling. The class is much more intense, and at the end we roll for 15 minutes. Rolling means actually doing bjj versus someone else, as opposed to merely drilling certain moves. The class focused on the knee on stomach position, which meant if you were on the bottom, you did a constant crunch for 20 minutes with 190 pounds kneeling on your stomach. And if you were on top you did a constant squat for 20 minutes. Either way, exhausting.

I came home and was relieved to see the tables looked good for the first time this week. I hopped on, loaded my 12 tables and went to work....sigh. Absolutely nothing went right. However, because I was so excited that the tables were good, I didn't care. I didn't get many hands in, again, because I probably only averaged 9 tables at a time...many tables would either break, or I was on wait lists for years. 1500 hands later I stopped when almost all tables broke and I was even, and elated. There is no way I should've been even on that session, so it was a major break even win. I'm still running over 4ptbb/100 on the month, but I am way behind on hands. I can't be too upset about it though, because there was no point playing much this week based upon the amount of nitty regs at each table. I think it will get better, which will mean from mid to late January through February I'm going to have to play a bazillion hands...fun.

Food and exercise is going well, and as I suspected, is the easiest part of this challenge. Even if I don't make 20 pounds, I feel great and I know I am losing some weight, and probably gaining a bit of muscle. First weigh in is tomorrow, and I'll post another video along with graphs and screen shots of my poker results for the week.

Weigh in, Jan 2 - 188.1 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 7th- $1,937.59

Waiting...

I planned to play 4k-5k hands yesterday. Plan was foiled by absolutely awful tables. At the minimum, 6 regs were at each table. Some had over 8. Blah. Here's to hoping everyone who made new years resolutions will give up after a week, as is the case with 90% of the people that make them.

I did end up getting in around 1700 hands and making $642. My play isn't completely optimal as of late, and I think it has alot to do with being preoccupied with fulfilling my goals. My success over the past few months is due in great part to my ability to not think about how bad or good I am running. I could forget a horrible beat the second it happened, and not be able recall the hand at the end of the session unless I go back and review my big hands when I was done. Now, with pressure to make alot of money, I have been worrying a little too much about each specific hand. I worked hard from the middle of last nights session until the end to forget like I use to, and I think I will be able to from here on out. Preoccupation with how one is running is a major pitfall in poker. It is the one thing that can make or break a cash game grinder's career. The ability to continue playing, grinding, or doing what one is doing, regardless of the ups and downs that are occurring, can really help you get over the hump in terms of making consistent profit. This concept is the same in sports. Any collegiate or professional athlete reached the level that they are on because they had the ability to make it through adversity. Meh, I think I'm rambling a bit, and at some point I'd like to be able to write a succinct blurb about the intangible qualities that make a good poker player, but for now Ill drop it. Suffice it to say that 95% of the population couldn't be a pro poker player, just as 95% of the population couldn't be a division one or professional athlete.

Yesterday I received my second strip at BJJ. I am now allowed to go to intermediate classes and Randoris (kind of like an open gym where you go and roll..no structured class). I'm going to go to my first intermediate class tonight...translation, I'm going to go and get tapped out a bajillion times, and come home more winded than I ever have. Yay. Over time it will get better, and so will I. Getting your butt kicked only makes you want to get better faster. So its completely necessary :) in whatever it is that you do.

I also went to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was entertaining and heartwarming, but Brad Pitt's character was pretty emotionally blah. Absolutely nothing he did made you feel like you actually knew him. It was like he was just there. Everyone else though acted very well.

I have my first weigh in since I started last friday coming up in two days, and I think things are going well..but we'll see. It also appears I will be playing alot of poker on the weekends based on the bad tables during the week.

Weigh in, Jan 2 - 188.1 pounds
Poker Profit as of Jan 6th - $1,962.58