As they usually do (which is why I didn’t totally panic or anything) things turned around today - this afternoon specifically. The cards are finally starting to return back to a normal distribution instead of the BS that had been taking place all weekend. I’m 10-3 in the last 13 games, which is a great way to rebound from a 6-10 performance last night. Imagine my surprise when this guy ACTUALLY missed an open ended straight draw all in. That definitely marks a first all weekend! Yay!

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

Normally, I steamroll over 61% of my opponents heads up, and since 2008 started I’m winning over 70% of my games in fact, with a 22% roi over 600 games. However, this weekend has been pretty rough. I suppose I was “due” for one of those, but the timing of it could have been a little better since I’m about to get hit hard with bills in 5 days. Anyways, the trend this weekend is this:

First off, obviously I’m running terribly. Normally in an 8 hour heads up session I’ll get AA maybe 4-5 times, KK 4-5 times, QQ 4-5 times, and so on… for each pocket pair. Flop maybe 4-6 sets, and get paid on roughly half of them. However, the problem is that the normal skill elements of play such as playing the man as opposed to playing the cards has not worked either this weekend, because everyone keeps floating me to either make a move, or what I would find out to be them slowplaying their hand. I always preach “keep the pots small until you’re comfortable with where you’re at” over and over and over again, but my opponents are not letting me keep the pots small by any means. Don’t get me wrong, I know how to play big pots just as skillfully as I do the small ones. However, the smaller the pots, the lower the variance I always say.

I’ve been rivered all in with the best hand probably 6-7 times in the last 24 hours. I also can’t tell you how many times I had someone outkicked, but they spiked two pair on me. I have been in about 7-8 race situations, and have only won 2 of them. All of that pretty much adds up to a bad day if you ask me.

I also keep totally airballing the flops in which I raise. I can’t keep continuation betting because it becomes really obvious after a while, so then I have to walk the fine line between seeming too passive and also playing my hand for it’s value.

Hopefully, this will all be over soon without me having to write some crazy tin foil hat letter to pokerstars as I did the last time. Which, by the way, you be the judge on whether or not it worked. I’m up $10,000 since I wrote them that letter a little over two months ago. Hmmmmm…

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

A lot of people who are accustomed to seeing me at Harrah’s haven’t seen me playing AS much as I used to, and the answer to that is simple. Although Harrah’s New Orleans has some of the juiciest cash games even imaginable - nothing beats the convenience and low variance of heads up sngs. I was sick of all the rules at Harrahs. Ready for a few of them?

1. No Smoking (obviously don’t care since I don’t smoke, but still… another “rule”)

2. No ELECTRONIC DEVICES at the tables. Yes, this means EVERYTHING: Ipods, phones, laptops, PDAs, bluetooth headset, anything electronic. This is a state law, not a Harrah’s law so I don’t fault them for it - however it’s still a good reason why I’m preferring online poker to live poker for the moment.

3. $1 per hand won goes towards the jackpot. This might not sound like much, but think about all of the pots you win in a night. On average, if you play an 8 hour sessions, we’ll say 15. $1 x 15 = $15. If you play 5 days a week, you’re looking at $15 x 5 = $75/wk. Going even further with it, you’re looking at $75 x 4 = $300/month in JACKPOT FEES!
What pisses me off the most about this is that $3/$6 LIMIT poker has the SAME SHOT at winning the jackpot, when generally they are risking less money than the 1-2/2-5/NL players are. For $100, a decent 3/6 player can camp out all night trying to hit a $60,000 jackpot, meanwhile someone playing 2-5 NL has to risk a minimum of $500 generally to do so. You think that’s fair? I don’t.

4. Time Rake. Ridiculous. $6 per 30 minutes. $12/hr. That’s $96 per session. This means you have to win $96 before you can even have a break even session. It doesn’t seem like much at the time, but at the end of the year when you’re doing you “poker paperwork”/accounting, look at how much rake you paid. Someone who plays 5 days a week, 8 hours a day will have paid $24,960 in rake. I’m not done yet. Including the jackpot calculations above that same person at the end of the year will have had to make $28,290 before he could even BREAK EVEN. Do-able? Sure. Worth the risk? That’s something you have to decide for youself.

Anyways, online poker has provided me with everything I didn’t like about Harrah’s.

1. I don’t come home smelling like smoke. Even though the poker room is non-smoking, the rest of the casino is not and the smell permeates throughout the building.

2. Less variance. WAY less variance. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely make a killing at Harrah’s, however it comes with a price. Every now and then I’ll get sent home with
my tail between my legs thinking about how I lost amounts of money that some people could buy plasma TVs with.

3. Comfortability. Although I rarely play poker in my underwear (sorry to disappoint any of you), it’s nice to know that I COULD if I wanted to. However, shorts and a plain white T is comfortable enough for me to call my daily grinding uniform.

4. More accurate stats. www.sharkscope.com is the best thing since sliced bread. I don’t need to fill out any spreadsheets or log any entries into a notebook, because it’s all right there for you and completely automated. Look me up sometime - Pokerstars: trujm , Full Tilt: trujm

5. Ability to take breaks whenever I want, and spend time with my GF. It’s tough to balance everything in life: love life, financial life, personal time, social life, exercise, vacation time, paying bills, personal health. Only a select few people in this life can perfectly balance all of those things. By playing online vs. live I put myself in a better position to be able to accomplish all of those things.

More imporantly than any of this stuff above though is my desire to increase my income stream though starting a EBAY business and starting an online store designing T-Shirts. The store is only about 20% complete, but there are still some pretty cool designs (some of them have to do with poker). You should check it out: The Silly Goose: Creatively Expressive Designs/Apparel.

Hopefully one day making money will become a totally automated process for me, where I won’t even need to be present at the computer but maybe 3-4 hours a day and make a killing, but until then I’m stuck to grinding (which I don’t mind - life would be pretty boring if it were THAT easy SO SOON, right).

Anyways, that’s what I’ve been up to. Will talk more about actual poker later

Well, it took me an hour or so to get this configured on my webserver (which previously most of you knew as a non-active message board). I figured I’d make better use of my webspace, and turn this into a daily/weekly blog space for me to ramble on about the ins and outs of being a professional poker player. This is my first attempt at even writing in a blog, much less installing one on my web server, so you may have to bare with me while I get this whole thing configured properly. If anyone would like information on how to get one of these (webserver, database setup, blog software, ftp upload program, and how to configure it) just let me know and I’ll be more than happy to get you going so that we can possibly get a blog-circle started.