No internet and no air conditioning.

Just moved into the rental house that I will live in for 5 months while the new house gets built. So far I have no AC and no internet access... so no poker but tomorrow night I will be playing in a $100 buyin tournament. Actually on second thought it looks like I might go play a quick tournament tonight for $60. Unless the wife is still not feeling well then I will rush to her side.

Smokkee I will be back.

I am moving this weekend as my fathers day gift! At least we hired movers to put us into our house rental for at least 5 months while our new place gets built.

Soon as I can I will do what I can to get back to the blogger events and try to win some of them!

I am sure that most of you guys miss my 336 reraises into you holding the nuts....

Finally some poker to report

Played live poker last night after a run around night on the town. Did my show up with a light buzz and the plan of not playing any hands until I got some pop into me. Had a great night overall where I was up over $450 playing 1-2 because my tight style got paid off.

I did try to alter my play a little and take some slowplay risks because my live cash game is quite ABC. KK in the SB and I call a raise with three other callers. I knew that if I reraised here I would be telling them I have A's or K's. By calling I could get away from the hand cheap if an A hit and I could check raise the flop because two of the players were aggro post flop. See a nice Q high flop and I don't get to check raise because 1st aggro guy raises to $15 and aggro player 2 re-raises to $60.

Now what do you do in this instance? 1st aggro player is solid but loose and aggro but will call bets out of position if he senses weakness. I tried to just call the reraise hoping that both come along for the ride. 1st aggro guy folds and a beautiful K falls on the turn. I check and she bets $60 and I go all in and she calls with AQ.

Now after this I notice that when I raise she always seems to call with any two cards. I am only raising pairs at this point of the evening once I am up a few bucks. In EP+1 I raise with AA and get thebutton and the BB (same villian) to call. Now even when I miss a flop I usually have to bet $25 to get these guys to fold as a cbet with a $10 preflop raise. So following the same pattern I fire out $25 and the button folds but my BB villian reraises me to $60. She only has $102 behind so I don't see her folding after putting 40% of her cash in the middle so I push. She calls and I don't get to see her cards as I rake in another good pot.

The key for me winning money in that place is to arrive sober enough to play and also leaving once I start to become a calling station.

First poker night in a while

Rusty as all hell.... down 90 or so tonight but tried a couple of those HU token tourneys... lost two in a row.... and also lost a reg token event... blah all around.

Going to start to work out again and try to lose about 20 lbs and see if I can pick up my energy level. At some point I also want to get my sleeping patterns analysed because I know that I wake up far too often. That is messing with my ability to get good rest and think better the next day.

Lots of good stuff to do and not enough time to get it all done!

Wow time is flying

I have to get back in gear and start to play some poker again.... been too long since I sat down at a blogger event and started raising every other hand to 336... I realize that I have been tagged multiple times so I figured I should start with those random 7 things about me.

1. I am shitty at being a husband, father, friend etc. Being so selfish is something that I try to not do but it still happens far too often. Add alcohol to the mix and I get even worse!

2. As I get older I am getting so lazy and fat. I think that getting overweight gives me less energy which contributes to my lazyness!

3. The new house I am buying is only a couple km's from my current house. Moving right next to a provincial park and looking forward to having more space. I did splurge a little by buying heated floors in the bathroom and we also put the toilet into its own room instead of it being part of the bathroom area.

4. Never been a pet person. I guess that comes from not having pets like a dog while I was a kid. The birds or fish I did have always died due to lack of care on my brother or my part.

5. I would like to spend half of the year on the east coast living near Halifax and my winters in TO. TO has snow but it is also the only place I have found that I can make good money working in the financial industry.

6. Multiplication tables were / are tough for me to recall. Learning stuff like that has always required pure memory and my mind always struggles in those situations. I remember at the time saying that the real issue was if we could always carry a calculator on us. Now I do have my rim on me to handle those difficult calculations!

7. I am a big Pepsi fan. I can and do drink upwards of 4-5 cans a day and if I am offered Coke I will usually 'settle' for it.

Now lets hope I can start to get into a few of these blogger events and win some damn points.

Lots going on

Been busy for the last few weeks and the poker game has to be rusty as hell. Managed to put my house up for sale and then sell it for 98% of list within a week. I also was on vacation that week visiting a friend in Atlanta for a couple days. After that the rest of the week was spent in Orlando taking little Guin to see Mickey Mouse.

Since I got back last week work has been busy as hell... just working hard to get back my stress level that made me need the last vacation! The good thing is that things are working out and making some good coin.

Yesterday was the deadline for filing my taxes and I found out that I am owed 3k by our gov't. Looking forward to getting that and hopefully not getting audited!

Tonight I have a university alumni event where we chat to current MBA and undergrads that are about to graduate and move to Toronto. Fun fun... at least the booze is free.

Later Neteller

Got my cheque from the folks over at Neteller. Sad to see a bunch of my poker bankroll come out but it should convince me to play better to build it back up. This is my first withdrawal since starting playing online.... only put $100 online to start and just took out almost 2k. Not a bad return especially when you consider all the awesome internet buddies I have made.

So Neteller doesn't want the Canadian cash moving business... well back to promoting MyCitadel to get cash to most sites trouble free.

Flying to Atlanta tomorrow but not much free time (would have loved to meet the whole Atlanta crew) this weekend. Starting by landing at 1 pm and then going to the hockey game at 3 pm. On the Sunday I am going to take little Guin to the Georgia Aquarium which looks like it will be a fun family event. Then it is off to Orlando for a week of fun and hopefully sun with lots of time spent on the beach and visiting with Micky Mouse.

The last thing to finish up before going on vacation is finalizing our upgrades on the house we bought. New builds leave 5,000 questions to be answered and we are getting closer to the end of it all. Our current place is just getting listed and hopefully it will sell at a good price.

Been Busy

Sorry for the lack of posting and playing in blogger events. Been super busy with my investments and trying to come up with the cash to pay for the new house the wife wanted.

In the process of getting the current house ready for sale we had a few rooms painted. The paint was giving me a headache (and I think giving me a weird 'high') while I proceeded to lose half of my FT bankroll. I did things that evening that would normally never even cross my mind. Now I will get a good chance to play another 10k hands at NL25 as the bankroll dictates that is the current level.

Painful but no problem as I should be able to regain lost cash soon enough and get the game to dominate 6 max tables.

Looking forward to rejoining the group soon as I can. Happy Bunny Day!

Does poker make me better?

Just read the ton of material that CC wrote on the impact of poker on seven areas of his life. Figured I would take a large shortcut method to plan out my own thoughts on the same issues... I promise to be much shorter than one of his writeups to cover all seven points!

Spiritual - Well pokers bad beats give me another explanation for all things spiritual. Bad beats and probability explain most situations better for me than the thought of some dude in the sky messing with my life. Being an atheist I feel comfortable knowing that *I* am the person who is accountable for my results. That gives me a feeling of peace to wake up each day to be the best at anything I choose to do. Also having no fear of an afterlife lets me focus on enjoying this reality here and now. Sort of like when a video game ends and the "Game Over" shows up is how I view the world.... in the meantime lets rack up a high score! So poker is positive for me as it is just another area where I can learn about people and study them while having fun.

Financial - This is an area of poker where I naturally excel. Money sort of comes easy to me and poker lets me utilize my skills of understanding risk / return. Bankroll management is similar to my portfolio where the goal is to consistenty put your money into risky situations that are +EV with no risk of ruin. I think poker is not positive or negative in my life in this regard because it is the one place that I am a professional. That being said my poker game better develop so I can get to play Fuel at some high level tables.

Career - Similar to financial for me where poker just sharpens my ability to read people and make better decisions. I already had the job that I worked years to achieve prior to getting into poker so again no real impact. I will say that it has allowed me to network with even more people that also play and it gives us a common interest. Networking is at an insane level in my job where I regularly run into 20 people I know at almost any hockey game I attend. Poker could become a big positive if / when I win some large poker tournament!

Physical Fitness - Hell nothing can be blamed for the sorry state of health I am currently in other than my lazyness. Poker sure didn't make things worse so again I don't think it impacts me here one way or the other.

Maritial Relationship - Lucky to have an amazing wife who gives me the space and time to play. She would like to have me go to sleep a lot earlier most times but I have a hard time slowing down at the end of the day. Now when I play when she is awake and wants to talk then poker is a big negative. I suffer from a serious case of ADD which gives me some hyper focus on stuff I want to do but I then ignore everything else. The thing is that if I wasn't playing poker I would be reading / playing video games / doing something else because watching tv isn't much of an option. Overall, poker has to fall into the negative on the relationship mostly because she wanted me to have a hobby like cooking instead.

Parent - I play when my little Guin is sleeping so not negative from that standpoint. The negative part is when I am too tired the next morning to really put my time and energy into her activities.

Intellectual - For sure poker is positive in helping us all discover more about ourselves. This is the one area where hopefully we all continue to work at using our mind to its fullest capability. Seeing Doyle continue to kick ass at his age is super impressive and we can all aspire to do similar things.

Friendship - Just another great place to run into non-Bay St. thinkers. Blogging has also been a fun way to document the journey. Unlucky for everyone is that my writing skills are not going to improve anytime soon. Poker is positive in this area..... now if I can just get to a few more live blogger filled events.

Psychological - Poker has been positive with helping me stay level. When I started the steaming over bad beats was constant but now I only flinch a bit. Now the wife does say that she finds that I appear emotionless a bit more often which she doesn't like.

Wow that was long.

New Rim and Bball tomorrow night

I am going to get the newest version of the Rim device. The old one just ran out of steam and it isn't working. The best part about this new one is the built in GPS and maps built in... I guess I won't be using my FT points to get that Garmin GPS system.

Tomorrow night is going to be a lot of fun at the ACC. Courtside seats to watch the Raptors... gotta love the chance to see Iverson and Carmelo vs. Bosh.

Riverrun over me!

Had a great night playing last night where I am starting to get a feel of the types of tables that I can run over alot easier. Playing against a table of rocks sure isn't the place for me because when they reraise you really have to give them respect. Of course it would have been nice to catch a real hand once in a while to pop them right back.

Riverrun shows up at my table yesterday and I get dealt QQ and we end up all in. Of course he has AA but a sweet Q shows on the flop. The K landing on the river to give him the nut straight wasn't so sweet but something that doesn't impact my results as much as in the past. Almost at 10k hands of CR style playing of 6 max at the NL25 and NL50 level. So hopefully after another 5k hands at NL50 will give me enough of a bankroll to start putting NL100 into the mix.

Finished my PPA bonus yesterday as well so that was an additional $100 into the account. Sweet! Now I know that Fuel put out a little challenge on why we all aren't playing the higher stakes games... my answer is that I am planning on it but want to have the right tools available so I can stay there. Like investing this is just a slow and steady progression to becoming the best at something I choose to do.

Not much poker last week

Went to the hockey game tuesday and watched the Leafs beat Tampa... on Wed went to the Raptors game which they won over the Knicks. Hopefully the Leafs get into the playoffs and go against my Penguins.

Started back at NL25 tonight since I am rusty and ended up about $60 tonight.... nice since that is in addition to the $120 in rakeback from last month. Now when I get comfortable and get to NL100 then the rakeback should pick up and add to the stack.

I did watch a CR video tonight where GP had trouble dealing with a shortstack with a premium pair. For sure this has been one of the toughest things for me to learn how to deal with at tables where I am trying to play a LAG style. But experience is what we are looking for and I am starting to get a few hands in to improve my play. Also still very committed to making myself a better player by using the CR videos.

Bad Beats (but it could be worse!)

Any of the three readers on this blog know that I don't whine usually about bad beats.... only thing that bugs me is if they happen to the same opponent who should realize that they are behind if I am calling or reraising them.

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
5 players
Converter


Pre-flop: (5 players) Mungo36 is Button with :ac :qh
UTG folds, CO calls $0.5 (pot was $0.75), Mungo36 raises to $2.75, 2 folds, CO raises to $7, Mungo36 raises to $23, CO calls $13.75 (pot was $27.5).

Flop: :ts :qd :9c ($46.75, 2 players)
CO is all-in $1, Mungo36 calls $1 (pot was $47.75).

Turn: :3s ($48.75, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $48.75)

River: :kh ($48.75, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: $48.75)

Results:
Final pot: $48.75
Mungo36 showed Ac Qh
CO showed Tc Kc

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.25/$0.50
5 players
Converter


Pre-flop: (5 players) Mungo36 is BB with :5s :5d
UTG raises to $1, CO calls $1 (pot was $1.75), Button folds, SB raises to $2, Mungo36 calls $1.5 (pot was $4.25), UTG raises to $7.5, CO folds, SB calls $4.5 (pot was $11.25), Mungo36 calls $4.5 (pot was $15.75).

Flop: :3c :6h :5h ($23.5, 3 players)
SB bets $15.5, Mungo36 calls $15.5 (pot was $39), UTG calls all-in $12.35.

Turn: :2h ($66.85, 2 players + 1 all-in - Main pot: $60.55, Sidepot 1: $6.3)
SB is all-in $14.85, Mungo36 calls $14.85 (pot was $81.7).

River: :4c ($96.55, 1 player + 2 all-in - Main pot: $60.55, Sidepot 1: $36)

Results:
Final pot: $96.55
Mungo36 showed 5s 5d
UTG showed Qd Qh
SB showed 7h 7d

Flop TPTK after re-reraising him in the first hand (he was a bad player and I had seen him reraise with K high before) so I put him to the test. Of course he hits his two pair on river.

4 mins later I flop a set and manage to get both all in only to see him river his straight. The good thing is that I played solid tonight for a couple hours and the videos are starting to hit brain! I sort of had what could only be called a negative rush for five mins where I lost every big hand I was involved in. AK where I reraise a shortstack and he calls to see A88 flop. He has AA and I doubled him up.... set over set in another hand... so in 2 hours I make $200 to only lose $150 in 10 mins. Such is the game of poker and I will be back at it tomorrow evening.

A few 3 bets light working out when I notice guys multi tabling and taking advantage of position to raise... those guys are great for this move since it looks more genuine. Mining while watching a CR video does set me up nicely to join into a table with tons of confidence of what I am against.

Hand of the evening

Not sure when the last time I played at a table with so many calling stations. In the hand prior to this one the superstar managed to call a river bluff with his 3 high 4-flush calling 3/4 pot bet. So that is why I only have $40 because I couldn't reload in between hands fast enough while multi tabling.

So please take a look at this fantastic fun hand!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?894931

Made back most of the cost of the CR extension this evening while still working on a few things such as 3 betting and more focus on reads and taking good notes on players. Still don't have enough donkeys in the mix but working on it.... still finding the games sort of soft but not running super hot like before. Must be time to watch more videos and think more away from the game instead of hammering through another thousand hands.

No AC Vegas for me

Damn gov't didn't get me my passport in time so going to the US is out of the question. Don't want to be confused with the other terrorists and detained for a few days on no charges!

Well the good thing about blogger events is that there is always another one... I still haven't ever been to Vegas but this has to be the year. Of course to get to one of these events I better start winning some real cash online!

Today is the deadline to get your extension payment into cardrunners at the $20 / mth price. I did another 12 months and looking forward to seeing my progress over this next few months. So far I can see a change in my ability to read certain situations but I have to watch out in getting overaggressive at times. Learning to turn it down for a couple orbits and then ramping back up is something that GP is great at but I am still learning.

Have fun in AC guys.... wish I could have been there.

Been quiet lately

Not much poker going on these days.... ran into Astin and didn't make it back home in time for the Mookie. Instead ended up at Turf where I bet on the ponies for a while and had a good steak before heading home. Watched a couple episodes of Rome which is one of my favorite shows. I am looking forward to Regenesis having a 3rd season as they deal with some cool situations that can come our way.

Take a look at this bill (luckily I wasn't responsible for it!).... now that is a party. Of course I would have been drinking Krug and not Cristal (cuz I ain't no rapper).

Fun at the Mookie

Played like a donk in the Mookie last night and built up a huge amount of chips and then pissed it away. Got into a blind war with K2 and rereraised pushed against an unknown player (found out it was the winner of last weeks cc's thursday event) on a 882 flop. Of course he had A8 and I was a shortstack... at least he took the rest of my chips right after that.

Good thing was that the cash game was crusing along at NL50 6 max with me up $95 on the night after getting stacked early. Played tricky by calling a tight players pfr with JJ from the SB instead of raising. Flop comes all low hearts so I check (no Jh), MP player who limp/called preflop checked and the button raiser bets 3/4 pot. So to isolate I reraise him a pot sized bet thinking he has Ah and might be drawing / cbetting. The problem is that he had $35 to start and that meant that if he pushed I have to call. He pushes and I call a few more bucks and see he has A4h... shit. Reload and remember to reraise with JJ preflop to find out the strength of the opponents hands. So by the end of the night I had almost $200 in front of me at a table where I never got AA or KK even once.

I did have better success with the 3 betting light by improving my table image and making it tighter and more aggro post flop. Still having a hard time getting to a 5+ AF on the flop, 4+ on turn, and 3+ on the river. I enjoy floating people too often I guess!

Mac poker online

A bit of variance

One thing about learning this 3 betting light... it can be painful when you run into big hands. So lost about 4 buyins last night with some super aggro play and not hitting a single draw. Gnome also linked up an article on being super aggro with 4 bet bluffs which I tried once and lost a buyin.

I will say that I got a ton of action but only from shortstacks that ran into my big hands. I did also tilt off half of a buyin but then realized the error of my ways and went to bed.

Back to the CR style until I dominate for a few more weeks and I will for sure take another run at building this into my game.

High VPIP

The Superstar Poker Gnome (nice 10k winning day) asked me how I could possibly get my vpip over 30% and I said I would show one of the ways I was doing it.... raising from EP with hands that hit gold or are easy folds. I do cbet often but usually with position or when against weak/tight players that are likely to fold unless I am beat. Against tricky players I cbet less but just often enough that they play back at me when I have a big hand later on. Think of it as a way to induce bluffs later on in the session... lose a few small pots but stack them later on.

The Gnome just wrote a masterpiece on 3 betting that everyone should read and it will be a focus for me over the next week. To do this I will probably pull the vpip back to the mid 20% range so I appear to be a little less of a LAG type player.

Beware the Penguins! Gotta love the moves the team made at the trade deadline.

Getting money out of poker sites or neteller

Umm all those folks with money stuck in FT or PS (not sure about ability to send cash to someone else in neteller) I think I can help you out. For a small fee (still haven't looked through the financial costs yet) I can get you to fire me the cash on the site and I can put it in my bank account and mail you a cheque.

Not sure if anyone reads this or has an interest in getting cash out of poker sites but this probably works for a few of you who are currently stuck.