A goot weekend so far

Well, the weekend has been nice. Last night was a lotta fun. We watched Bama beat Auburn 6-5 after my goot friend Emeel Salem hit a walkoff homerun in the bottom of the 10th inning to finish off Auburn. Being the degen. gambler that I am, I had been proposition betting with my friend Ben all night, and extremely ironically, right before Salem hit the homerun, I had given Ben 90:1 on the last dollar in his wallet on Salem hitting a walk-off homerun. He turned it down. Needless to say, he was kinda sick when Emeel blasted one to right-center to end things.

From there we went to a friend's house for a 21st birthday party and it was busted quickly by the cops, as always :( Today I watched the NFL draft for 10 hours straight with some friends while eating pizza and drinking brew. We went to the Pi Kap house, and hung out with people, and now I'm finally back home. The draft was quite interesting. Some notable picks with Alabama ties:

33rd: Houston Texans...Demeco Ryans: Alabama linebacker
36th: New England Patriots...Chad Jackson (Hoover HS):
Florida WR
43rd: New Orleans Saints...Roman Harper: Alabama safety
and FINALLY,
85th: KC Chiefs scoop Brodie Croyle: Alabama QB. Brodie slipped quite a bit beyond what the experts expected, but it's nice to see him picked up on day 1. Maybe Trent Green will go down with an injury in training camp and Brodie will compete for starting job :) Meanwhile, he can show us where KC's best BBQ restaurants are.

Sidenote:
Tomorrow is the final day of April. I'm going to try to squeeze in some poker between watching the race at Talladega and the NBA playoffs. If I can put together some numbers at $530 it is possible that I can come out of the month of April with a + five figures month (after rakeback). I pride myself on not really working during the weekends, but tomorrow is an exception :)

Ship $1520

Today was very nice. Philip came over and woke me up early (noon) and a bunch of us went to lunch at Barnhill's. From there we spent most of the day at Lake Nicol catching some rays and jumping off the cliffs. It was my first time to go. Now I know what all the fuss is about. We had a blast and are probably going back soon. I'm about to head out to the Auburn @ Alabama baseball game.

Poker:
Mixed emotions about today. Play 16 $530s over a 2 hour span and beat them for $1520 at 1/3/3/9. It's really frustrating to finish in the money 7 out of 16 times and only make $1520 though. Things didn't go right in the final 3 at all. I'll take it though.

Really weird day, +$1296

Well, today is a testament to how weird the game of poker is. At about 3 pm today I started running $215s continuously and was 0/0/0/12 through the first 12 games. It was the worst I'd ever been defied by the numbers, as far as I can remember. I lost 7 3 outters, AA vs KK and KK vs T9o all preflop in the first 12 games. After 16 games I'd gotten back to -$1440. I decided I was going to play some $530s to take the place of my 24 remaining $215s that I was supposed to play today. It was a good idea :) I ended up dividing my final few games into some smaller games, so I could get as close to an $8600 investment as possible (40 x $215 = $8600). Here are the final results on the day:

$530s: 1/2/1/3 = +$2790
$215s: 2/1/2/17= -$1330
$109s: 0/0/0/1 = -$109
$55s: 0/0/0/1 = -$55
___________________
Total = $1296


Time to go hang out with some friends.

SS

-$1000

Another frustrating day at $215. I got 40 in at a disheartening 2/6/5/27 for -$1000 exactly. I had enough bubbles to make myself sick to my stomach, and I just didn't get it done when I did get in the money. There just isn't any excuse for winning just 2 out of 40 games. I didn't do much today other than poker because it was rainy. I'm going to make some adjustments and hopefully put some numbers together tomorrow.

-$400

6/1/4/29 at $215s, so I lost $400 of my $8600 investment. Very even. I went on TILT for 5 minutes in a 6 table set earlier today, so basically that was the difference between it being a winning day and losing day. Also, I went to The Comedy Club in Birmingham to see Rodney Carrington with my friend Philip tonight, so that was a good time. More good news. Jon and I have decided to tack on one more event to our pre-Vegas travel schedule. We are almost positive we're going to Barcelona, Spain for the World Heads Up Poker Championship from May 19-26, so again if anyone is interested let me know. Link below.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/festival.php?a=r&n=2813

It's 3 am. I'm going to bed.

Blah day

Spent a few hours of the day yesterday playing the St. Pete, Russia satellite. Myself and 3 others agreed to do a 4 way chop of the travel expenses and hotel accomodation if one of us won, but unfortunately we all finished out of the money. Only 1 out of every 36 got a seat, so it was going to be a long shot, still. Dave "Trip12s" Anderson almost turned the trick. He finished 18th and the top 7 got seats. Other than that I airballed the 2 big Sunday tournaments and lost some freeroll equity. The chance of me getting another WSOP seat without putting more money in now is looking bleak. Other than that I basically just recovered from the incessant amount of alcohol I drank over the weekend.

Today was rather blah. I woke up at 1, went out to the pool with Philip, and then played 27 $215s at an extremely pedestrian 4/2/2/19 for a whopping +$195. I guess I can't complain though. It is Philip's 21st birthday tonight, so we're going to have dinner and drink's at Logan's Roadhouse.

Sidenote: I'm probably going to go to Lake Tahoe, NV for the WSOP circuit events from June 8-14. The main event is the 16-18, but so is City Stages in Alabama. I'll have to skip out on the main event :( I turn 21 on the 7th and think it would be a lot of fun. Unfortunately it doesn't look like anything is worth traveling to Internationally before that time. If anyone is interested in going to Tahoe for those events, let me know. I've already had a couple interested people, so room would be cheap split 4-5 ways. I've included a link to the Tahoe schedule...

http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/laketahoe2006.asp

Fun Saturday + ship some equity

I didn't really get moving around until about 4:30 pm today. I got 2 hours of poker in playing 2 WSOP step 4s. The first one I lost a big pot with JJ vs AT after we got the money in on the flop of xxT, but I rallied to clinch a retry. In the second one I played what I felt was really solid poker and ended up finishing in top 2 with my good friend, Danish internet phenom, "bajawa". Tomorrow night I will play for another seat. I've started to play extremely aggressive in WSOP steps. I think that is really the ticket. You have 36 year old accountants playing that game, and they really don't wanna go bust. I can accumulate a ton of chips from level 3-5 while they sit back, play passively, and try to lucksack their respective ways into the seat.

Outside of poker I had a really good time today, too. I hung out at Pike with my boys Ben Presley, Wes Spencer, Trey Booth, the Kilcoynes and crew. They had their annual "Outrigger" party and everyone had a sick time. It was really good to see some old faces. Hopefully tomorrow I can make it 7 straight days of + equity, which isn't easy by any means.

K,
SS

Five in a row...+$1155

Today was interesting. I started off my first 35 $215s at -$925, but rallied to murder the last 8 games for $2080 to finish the day at 4/8/4/27 and +$1155. Sadly though, I played 2 WSOP step 4s and finished 4th in both of them to get a retry each time. In the second one I had AA go down to Q5o all-in preflop, so that was a little disappointing. I really want to get up to step 5 with a couple of these freerolls, so I can bank another $11,000 if I win. If the weather is gloomy tomorrow like it was today, I'll probably play more poker tomorrow. Tonight I'm gonna hang out with some friends and maybe make it out to Pike's "Outrigger" party if it stops raining.

I'm back. Ship the cash :)

Things are turning around. I beat up the $215 tables for a stratospheric 56% ROI today. I did it at 4/4/0/11 for +$2315. I woke up at 10:30 am today (strange) and ran the games continuously until about 1:30. This is the first time I ran games continuously, rather than in sets, in a while. I really enjoyed it. I kept 4 tables up at all times. I think 4 tables is where I can have maximum concentration. After my 19 games I became rather lazy and lounged around most of the afternoon until about 6:00 when Chris Balzli, a sober driver and I left for the Birmingham Barons game. We had a blast and took major advantage of the $1 beer and 20 cent wing promotion that was going on. When we got back we went up to The Mellow Mushroom to see Wetherly play a live show, so that was cool as well. Tomorrow I'll probably run 20-40 $215's continuously. I also moved another WSOP step 3 up to step 4 today, so I'm happy about that. I am more determined than ever to bring home a bracelet from Vegas. It is not easy at all to win a poker tournament, but I feel like my postflop skills are getting close to immaculate.

Sidenote: I am, somewhat unfortunately, single now. Katherine and I were very good friends for a long time and took a stab at a relationship, but it just didn't work out. As many of you know long-distance relationships aren't the easiest thing in the world. I'm not bitter at all though, and I have the utmost respect for Katherine. We'll continue our relationship as very good friends, and things will be okay.

+850

Well, I was occupied most of the night, so I only got 10 $215s in today and played them at 1/2/2/5 for a nice +$850. My mom came down to Tuscaloosa tonight, so we all had a nice dinner at Olive Garden. I'm very bummed though because I just got fucked pretty hardcore to finish 3rd in a WSOP step 4 when top 2 advance to play for another seat. I won't tell the bad beat story, but it was pretty painful. I have a retry at the step 4 though, so I will just move it up to step 5 tomorrow. The last 3 days I've played 74 $215s at 11/5/11/47 for +$2490. I'm going to try to get about 40 more in tomorrow.

$440 more

It's 6 p.m. and I'm done playing for the day. I'm about to go have some drinks with my friends for Amy's 21st Birthday. I chalked up another decent day and added $440 to the bankroll after playing 24 games at 4/0/4/16. Anthony and I also went to the pool for a couple hours. I also got my cell phone which I'm excited about, so I will be in touch with all of you to get your cell phone numbers since I don't have them anymore :( Tonight is going to be a lot of fun though. Also, I guarantee that all 5 days of poker this week are going to be winning days. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever "guaranteed" anything in my poker career...if that's any indication of my confidence :)

Tuesday,
Shannon

A goot start

Today was nice. I woke up around 12:30 and grinded 27 $215s before Anthony and I worked out and ran. I was actually -$605 through the first 27 games, but when I got back from our workout I played 13 more games at +$1805 for a final total of +$1200. I think I'm going to play strictly $215 this week.

The only bad part of the day is that the idiots at DHL somehow forgot to deliver my phone to me. Hopefully I will get it tomorrow. Tomorrow should be a lot of fun. My friend Amy turns 21, so a bunch of us are going to a Mexican restaurant during the day for food and margaritas.

Nice weekend

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter. I did. On Friday in Birmingham we celebrated my friend Trevor's 21st birthday at another friend's house. Unfortunately the cops shut it down at about 11:00 pm and we were relegated to the bar. Nonetheless, it was a really good time and I'm very jealous that people are turning 21 and I'm still 20. Saturday was pretty uneventful. I sat around most of the day with my family and my mom and I watched "The Game" on Saturday night. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who hasn't seen it. Finally, today was very enjoyable. My mom, little sister and I went over to my late-grandmother's house and played some croquet (yea, you read that right) for most of the day and ate some really good food. I'm back in Tuscaloosa now. I'm going to work for a few hours to try to make some money. I lost about 65% of my freeroll equity for another WSOP seat on Thursday, but I'm going to continue to try to earn another seat with the freerolls that I have. I'll also mix in some $215 and $530. I'm not sure what the plan for this week is going to be. Last week I spent a lot of time playing golf and going to the pool during the day. I think I'm going to do some more of that. Playing poker 3 hours per day is a lot more exciting than 6-7 hours/day. I'm also working on continuing to not to get upset about losses. Poker is what it is and I can only be upset if I play poorly. If I get 3 outted 8 times in a row, I get 3 outted 8 times in a row.

Yea,
Shannon

dakljfad;slkf

Ok someone stole my phone at the Chinese restaurant today, so I won't be able to take any calls this weekend. I get my new phone on Monday. Email me if it's important, I guess.

Rigged,
SS

Ship the Main Event seat.

After a couple frustrating weeks trying to satellite into the 2006 World Series of Poker Main event, I finally did it tonight. Ironically, I got extremely lucky 3 handed and hit a 3 outter after the flop to survive and eventually rally back to win it. The heads up battle was extremely frustrating and lasted over 25 minutes. I was heads-up with a player from Houston named "wyzcrack". He minraised the entire tournament and even bet the minimum into most pots after the flop. It made it very tricky to put him on hands, so I give him credit for that. I must say that I'm not sure I would've been able to forgive myself if I didn't beat that particular player heads up with the deep stacks that we had. I've posted the hand history for the final hand.

Total number of players : 2
Seat 7: wyzcrack ( $9240 )
Seat 10: BLUFFforRENT ( $10760 )
Trny:22039885
Level:6Blinds(200/400)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to BLUFFforRENT [ Js Qd ]
BLUFFforRENT raises [800].
wyzcrack calls [600].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4s, Qh, 9d ]
wyzcrack checks.
BLUFFforRENT bets [1575].
wyzcrack is all-In [8240]
BLUFFforRENT calls [6665].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 5d ]
BLUFFforRENT shows [ Js, Qd ] a pair of queens.
wyzcrack shows [ Qs, 8s ] a pair of queens.
BLUFFforRENT wins 18480 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens with jack kicker.
wyzcrack finished in second and wins Entry to WSOP Step 5
BLUFFforRENT finished in first and wins WSOP package.

------------------------------------------------------------

This was the only poker tournament I played all day. I woke up around 1 and went out to the pool with Anthony. We then went to the gym and went for a run again. Finally, I ate dinner at Mellow Mushroom and won the seat on a full stomach :)

---------------------------------------------------------------

I still have a lot of freerolls to play at WSOP. Hopefully I can win another 2-3 seats without investing anymore money. I still will buy into the WSOP step 4s that I think are soft, however. Unfortunately, PartyPoker capped the number of seats you can win at 5. "Gamboholic_" single-handedly is responsible for that after she won 29 seats to the PPM V :)
Here is a list of my remaining freerolls:

WSOP Quick Step 1 (1) $60 equity
WSOP Step 1 (2) $20 equity
WSOP Step 2 (4) $220 equity
WSOP Step 3 (5) $1075 equity
WSOP Step 4 (1) $640 equity
WSOP Step 5 (1) $1665 equity

Total: $3680 equity

I must not deserve it.

It just doesn't make sense to me. I absolutely just can't win a pot when it matters on the WSOP steps. We're 4 handed at WSOP step 5. 4 players left and I have 3000 chips with blinds 100/200. Tuber27 makes it 1200 from the SB and I instantly ship my 3k in from the BB with TT. He calls with 44 and the board obviously comes xxx4x. It just doesn't make sense to me. I've now been booted from 2 WSOP step 5s by 2 outters and one by a 6 outter after the flop. I also lost every 4:1 I played in $530 today to go 0/1/2/11 for -$3920. It's 9:45 pm, but I'm done for the night. I am overcome with depression, so I'm about to watch some TV and start drinking.

Up a little.

I had a good time today. I woke up around 11 am and went to get my car washed. It was incredibly muddy from the rodeo this weekend in Auburn. From there Anthony and I went to the pool for a little bit, went to the gym, and went for a run. I got about 6 hours of poker in afterwards for a slight win, +$620.

$530s: 3/2/2/13 for +$1900
WSOP step 4: Bust for -$640
WSOP step 5 via step 4: bust for $-640
Total: +$620

Tomorrow I'm going to Birmingham to play golf with my dad, so that should be a good time. I'll continue to try to lock up the elusive WSOP main event seat tomorrow night. I still have 3 freerolls at step 5.

Blah day

Well I had a really good time in Auburn this weekend. We went to a rodeo and it proved to be quite an experience. I made it back to Tuscaloosa and got about 5 hours of poker in, mostly playing WSOP steps. I played 7 $530s, 2 WSOP step 5s and 4 WSOP step 4s for a total equity loss of about $575. The main focus this week is going to be turning my 4 WSOP step 5 freerolls into seats. In the 2 I played tonight I got knocked out in a massive pot with QQ vs JT after a 89x flop. Of course the guy hits his 6 outter though and I was out in 5th. In the other I got very short early and rallied back to get a retry at step 5 by finishing 3rd. Time to relax and watch some TV.

Still running goot

This morning I did an extensive numbers study for a couple hours and analysed my results. It turns out, I think, that I was making some very -EV decisions at times in the final 5 or 6. I ran trials and have made some adjustments over my last 30 $530s or so and have murdered it for almost $10k. I made $1500 this morning and advanced yet another WSOP step 4 to step 5, giving me 4 freerolls at a seat now. I'm headed to Auburn now. We're going to a rodeo tomorrow that should be a lot of fun.

There is hope.

Ok. So my last post said I wouldn't post for a while. Disregard that for now. I grinded a sick 13 hour session today for +$6860. I also turned 2 WSOP step 4s into WSOP step 5s, so now I have 3 freerolls for a main event seat. Hopefully I can turn atleast 2 of those into seats. I'm going to Auburn tomorrow and won't have time to play much until Sunday. I'm excited about the weekend and the opportunity to get away from poker for a bit.

Last post for a while

I've decided to discontinue posting blog entries until I'm happy with where my poker career is. I am going to continue to grind $530 until July even if it means losing my entire online bankroll. I am going into a true grinding stage. I'm probably going to play somewhere between 30-50 $530s a day on Monday-Thursday and then $215s late at night after the $530s stop running. Also, I'm turning all player chat off because I don't think it is +EV to chat at the table, so if you're a fellow $530 player and I don't answer on the table then you can reach me on here or on AIM.

I hate you, poker.

I don't remember the last time I won a set of $530s and I am absolutely incapable of holding off 2 and 3 outters. I got heads up tonight for a seat to the WSOP main event and of course blew a 3:2 chip advantage so now I have to retry it. The low that I'm at is extremely painful. I have no idea what to do. I am pretty sure that I don't wanna do this the rest of my life. The feelings that I'm experiencing right now are, without question, worse than any I would feel after getting up and going to a real job for 10 hours a day. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to play at all tomorrow. Instead, I'm going to drink alcohol most of the day to see if I feel any better about it.

First Quarter Analysis

Ok so I just finished my first Quarter of a Year as a professional poker player, and I must say I'm very happy with the results so far. March was pretty rough, but some things went wrong that contributed to that and I'm not too worried about it. I don't know if I've been a professional poker player long enough for it to be worthwhile, but I hope to subtly point out the positives and negatives of this lifestyle in this post. It's been said many times before and I'll try to reiterate it: This lifestyle isn't for everyone.

I'm not going to share my exact numbers because, quite frankly, it is my business :) I will say that I am on pace to make just short of $1 Million this year. Obviously I banked $180,000 bones at Aussie, but it's all relative. There is no reason that I can't have a huge score every quarter of the year. Hell, I could have 2 scores like that every quarter. I could win a bracelet for $1M in July. There is no telling what could happen. I am still as confident about my game now as I was 6 weeks ago after making back to back main event final tables. I'm just 20 and still learning a lot about gambling (and life for that matter). I'm just going to continue to try to make the most +EV decisions in every game I play. I'm in the negative over my first 400 games at $530. I have more than 100 times the buy-in for that game in my poker bankroll, so I'm not done with it. There are players beating that game over 400 games that don't have near the SnG knowledge that I do, so I'm positive it is beatable over the long term. I'm not ready to give up on the game because I only need to beat it at 40% of the ROI that I would beat $215 to make the same amount of money. Not to mention I could play less games per day which would give me more time to do the other things I enjoy. I'm also going to spend a significant amount of time in April at the WSOP steps. The structure of the steps on PartyPoker is very nice and allows for a lot of post-flop play, something I pride myself on. I'm going to spend a lot of time buying into the $640 WSOP step 4s and trying to turn them into $11,500 (WSOP package equivalent) at step 5. The WSOP steps, $215 SnGs and $530 SnGs will keep me pretty occupied in April.

As for the time I've dedicated to gambling in the first quarter, it's been 418 hours. I've averaged over $500/hour over that period of time. That amounts to about 32 hours per week. I'm happy with spending that amount of time per week playing. I'd even be content with playing a little bit less in April. When you look at only 32 hours/week dedicated to a job I think you have to be pretty content. I don't have to commute to and from my job like I would as a Civil Engineer. I figure I would be working 65-75 hours per week as an engineer if you include travel time.

A couple of other things: Like I said before, March was extremely rough. I unfairly let the anger that I had toward poker last month spill over into my personal life and probably wasn't very much fun to be around. For that, I sincerely apologize. I am very thankful for the position I'm in. I really have no room to complain. I have a wonderful family, girlfriend and lifestyle and things could be much, much worse. Finally, I haven't ruled out going back to school in the Fall of 2006. I'm actually thinking about it very strongly. I may not take an extremely tough load of classes though. As strange as it may sound I actually miss the grind of going to class and doing calculus and physics homework :) Obviously, there will still be a lot of poker in my life even if I'm a student.

It's 6:22 am Monday morning now. My dad, Tim and I are leaving to go to Augusta to see The Masters practice round in about 11 hours, so I think I'm going to get some sleep.