Stupid Laptop

Sorry for this blog post being a little late, but of course my laptop decides to finally give out on me last week.  I do have a temporary replacement, so next week the giraffes (graphs) will be back as I try to race to 10k.  Until then I came across this great article about the current state of online poker .  I know I probably have quite a few people read this that don't really play poker or know what happened on April 15th (which now is known as Black Friday in the poker community) and the aftermath that ensued so here's a great chance to get educated.  It is a bit lengthy, but trust me its a good read. Shipshape. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7333093/uigea-you

Rough Week

I was really looking forward to the start of this month after a strong finish last month, but this first week has been brutal.  The first day of the month, I dropped $200 in what can only be described as the doomswitch being turned on.  I lost every single all in and I was a favorite in most of them.  I got a little of it back in the next couple days, only to drop another $200 and to cement the downswing.  I’m not going to even post the graph because I proceeded to tilt and play bad throughout the week and ended up losing almost $600.  The combination of playing bad and running bad is really too much to overcome.  These things come with the territory though, so I just took a deep breath, shook it off and now I’m back to playing the game how it is supposed to be played.  I also got some pretty big news this week, but I won’t go into more detail about it until it becomes official.  But I will say it’s a game changer, and it’s going to put me in the right direction as far as my career is concerned.  Aight well I just wanted to keep this short and sweet.  I’ve decided to start a race to 10k challenge for myself.  I’m just going to try and see how long it takes for me to make 10k using my standard bankroll management.  I wasn’t going to put a time frame on it at first, but now I think I’ll put a goal date of January 31^st.  Should be fun to see if and when I do complete it, and it’ll probably be a huge learning experience.  I’ll be playing probably close to 1500 hands a day, something I’ve never done.  So all in all even if I don’t reach the goal, I should be well prepared to grind long sessions and keep my emotions in check.  I’ll be updating my progress every Monday on this blog so be sure and check back to see how it’s going.  I’ll also be doing daily updates on Twitter, so follow me on there as well.  Until next time... Shipshape.

Running Good Is Fun

Considering I had only made about $120 the first half of the month, I thought my goal I had set of making $300 in the second half was highly unlikely. I was way wrong and I have to thank my excellent tournament play for setting off the run. Last Friday, while coming off my turkey day hangover, I decided to jump into two tourneys. Well I ended up shipping both of them and with the new found cheese I was able to move up in stakes finally. As you can see from the graph, you can probably tell where I moved up in stakes because I went on a sick run from bouncing back and forth between +/-$50 to a straight upward slope +$400. I don’t really think my play changed either, but rather I finally started holding more often in hands I put it in as a favorite. Either way this was definitely the jump start I needed. I’m feeling really confident going into this month, and now that my bankroll is almost 1k, it’s time to start making some real money.

In my last post, I mentioned I’d write a post about the live WSOP Main Event coverage, but before I get to that I want to talk about live coverage of poker tournaments in general.  I first really got into watching live final tables online last year when I found out PokerStars streamed many of the final tables from their European Poker Tour (EPT). I would skip class if possible and go to computer lab and watch all day as they normally started at 7am my time and ended around 2 or 3pm. One thing I really liked was the commentary and realized that having actual poker players commentate on the action was the NUTS. And actually watching a tournament play out without already knowing the winner is a bonus as well. Fast forward a year and a lot of other tournament series have also started streaming their final tables online. So when the WSOP announced that it will be showing live coverage of the main event on ESPN3.com, I wasn’t too surprised. I was fairly shocked however when they announced that the final table will also be shown live on ESPN. Live television coverage of poker tournaments is still a work in progress, but many people believe it is the future of televised poker. I’d have to disagree, just because I don’t think the casual fan will be able to really get into it. When the final three played down for the bracelet, even I had a hard time staying awake through the 4+ hours of heads up play and I’m a fanatic. Overall, though, I loved the coverage. I had never heard Olivier Busquet speak before but he definitely gets the award for best commentator.  He was so insightful and articulate; how he doesn’t have more commentary work is beyond me.  Antonio was also good and even Phil Hellmuth had me cracking up with his absurdities and “great reads”. Although I don’t think live television coverage is here to stay, I gladly welcome it with open arms and hope they bring it back next year. But I really feel that online streaming is the best place for it. Shipshape.

P.S. – My buddy found this great article on the estimated taxes paid by each player at the final table this year. It’s a great and quick read. Check it out here:  http://www.taxabletalk.com/2011/11/09/the-real-winners-of-the-2011-world-series-of-poker/