Catching Up On Life

My father passed away last month.  He was able to come home for Thanksgiving, and he got to see all 6 of his siblings and their families, but the Saturday after Thanksgiving he lost his 4-year battle with liver and colon cancer.

When I remember my Dad, I think of some of the happiest moments of my childhood.  Getting checked out of first grade at noon to go catch a Braves day baseball game.  Watching R-rated movies in the theater before I was 10 years old.  My first conscious memory that I can clearly recall was when I was 3 and I went fishing with my Dad on Lake Lanier.

To help support him and my Mom were the reasons I moved to North Carolina 4 years ago... and this event has been looming over everything since.

My sister and mother are doing about as okay as can be expected.  We got my mom a brand new puppy, so at least she now has a mammal to fret over.\

Work has been going really well, I'll blog about that next.

Catching Up On Poker

I had a new best day ever on Merge, according to PTR.  Unfortunately my HEM1 is still bugging with the most recent update to Merge and I doubt it will ever get fixed, so I guess I'm SOL if I ever want to post graphs again.

But the numbers are pretty.  I made $763 in a day, mostly at NL100 on Merge.  I was taking shots aggressively and trying to put in volume while the last ever Bad Beat Jackpot on Merge was so high.  I was playing when it popped, and I was playing at NL100 when it popped, and somehow it popped on a NL100 table I wasn't on.  The "loser" got $209k, the winner got $100somethingK, and everyone dealt into the hand got $44k.  I could sooooooooooo have used that $44k if it JUST would have popped on a DIFFERENT TABLE, but so it goes.

After the Bad Beat hit, I figured the NL100 game quality would go back to shit, so I withdrew the roll I needed to play NL100 and now I'm back at NL10, playing recreational volume, and grinding up a roll.

I realize the rake is killer (Hi Conan!), and even though NL10 doesn't give me the competitive juices that playing 10 times higher does, sometimes I feel that I find a solitary poker joy in grinding up a roll from next to nothing.

So that's me now, playing recreationally whenever I feel like starting some tables, and fighting the good fight (usually with tard regs) heads up until it fills.

Poker lately

For some reason, ever since the latest big Merge update, my Hold'em Manager (HM1) won't make graphs. The HUD still works, and the import is fine, but I can't look at reports or graphs, so I don't have any graphs to show you.

Poker has been ok.  According to PTR, I was the biggest winner at NL10 in July, which was cool, but August was less kind to me.

After a significant sample, I'm starting to question whether I can still beat NL25.  I'm down a good clip over a fair amount of hands.  It sucks to think that I was a modest winner at NL100 pre-Black Friday and now can't even beat NL25.  But it's definitely true that I run awful whenever I play NL25, I have to be down lots in all-in EV.

I cashed out a bit after my good July at NL10, and I've since been playing a mix of NL10 and NL25.  The plan is to stick to those stakes and try to grind out $500-$1000/mo, keep my online roll low, and keep the cashouts coming in.

Some 2012 Fantasy Football Thoughts

What's up, internet.  Been awhile again.  But you know I wouldn't let the football season kick off without some fantasy thoughts.

I've been doing some drafts this past week and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts for fantasy football this year.

-  I find myself taking a 3rd running back before I get a 2nd wide receiver in most drafts.  That's about the point in the draft where running back really starts to drop off, and guys like Percy Harvin and Dwayne Bowe, completely fine WR2's, are still there.

-  If I don't get one of the top 3 quarterbacks (Rodgers, Brady, Brees), then I'm waiting for either Philip Rivers or Matt Ryan.  I don't trust Stafford to make it through a full season again, and you're buying high on Cam Newton if you draft him in the 1st or 2nd.  He won't repeat his rushing totals with Carolina's deep backfield.

-  My sleeper defense this year is the Arizona Cardinals.  Patrick Peterson returning kicks and 6 games in the NFC West?  Yes please.  My sleeper kicker is Rob Bironas.  He made 8 field goals in a game a few years ago, but more importantly he has a Week 11 bye.

I'm real excited for the football season.  The Falcons look explosive, it ought to be a great year.  Hopefully we can shed that playoff baggage and make a deep run... we've got all the pieces coming together.

(Disappointing) May Recap

That mid-month heater was pretty awesome, but the downswing afterwards drove me a little crazy.  Nothing I did at the tables could go wrong, and then nothing could go right.  I feel like I played pretty well, took frequent anti-tilt breaks, but just couldn't grind through it.  I'll be saving the upswing for June.

I've been mixing in a few tables per session at NL50, and it's going pretty well.  Actually, for last month most of my losses came at NL25 and most of my winnings came from NL50.  With rakeback, I still feel pretty comfortable with my roll so I'm going to continue with an aggressive bankroll management.

I'm pleased with my volume.  Since I'm working one job full-time and still DJ'ing part time, I'll take 40k hands per month.

So my June goals are pretty simple:

Play 40k hands
Make $1,000 before rakeback

Crazy NL10 Session

...I almost rage-quit at the bottom of that graph.  Now I'm glad I didn't!

That nice little session put the bankroll up to $500, so my self-imposed penance is done and I'm ready to move up to NL25 full-time.  Hopefully I can keep the patience a day like today required, and hopefully I run better there than I have so far this year.

The new job is going really well.  Right now, I'm broke as hell, but I get paid Friday, AND there's three bi-weekly paydays in June.  I feel like these times that have been rather rough for me are turning around.

Hope everyone's playing well and running well at everything.

(Belated) April Results

^^That was about as lame as it looks. The whole month was basically two nice little heaters, and getting douched all the other times. That's all NL10, too, so it's variance, the games have gotten worse, I've gotten worse, or more likely some combination of all of the above. At least I finished in the black.

But whatever. I play for recreation and competition now. And there are still challenges. There are these lol-tastic NL10 table-starting regs that 3bet 30%+ and think I don't know how to adjust, so that's always amusing.

I'm pleased I was able to play that many hands around working the new job. I'll make my May goals 30k hands, no monetary goals other than getting rolled for NL25.

Hope everyone plays good and runs better in May.