Wow. It's definitely been a while since I've posted here. I would like to say it was because of some kick-ass reason like touring the globe or chillin with the Dali Lama. Unfortunately it's only because I've been lazy and been staying away from poker these past few months. Instead I've found pleasure in climbing and have been going to an indoor climbing gym two to three times a week for the past month now. It's been a great experience so far and I've been enjoying it. It doesn't take the place of poker by no means, but at least I haven't been as lazy! haha

Back in the Saddle Again

well after a couple weeks away from the virtual felt i've started up again. saturday was my first day back playing and so far since then it has been good. my sessions this weekend weren't anything to write home about. i'm still only playin $.25/.50 NLHE and trying to get back into the cash game focus. for the most part i was card dead and ended $30 up for the weekend, but a small gain is better than any loss, so i'll take it. i'm going to stay away from the blogger tourneys for a little while while i focus on cash games right now, try to get my chops back. hopefully in a couple weeks i'll start them up again. i really would like to improve both my MATH and Mookie stats and try to show these bloggers that i can hang with them. ok, i'm not as good as several of the bloggers out there, but i can dream can't i?

Poor MATH Skills

played in the MATH last night with a very poor showing. i donked off about 1/6 of my stack early on just trying to bluff a pot and was called with mid pair flush draw. then about 30-40 minutes into the tourney, on my first good hand of the night, i decided to gamble and try to get an early big stack. in mid position i found pocket jacks and shot out a normal 4x raise of T240. action folded to AlCantHang on the button and he re-raised to ~T960. immediately put him on AK because i've seen him do this before and had a decision to make; i could fold and wait for a better hand but that seems rather weak, i could call and hope that there are all low cards, or lastly push and hope that my pair holds up. normally i'm very conservative and i would call and go from there but not playing much poker recently in the past month i decided i wanted to see some action, so i pushed. he calls and just as predicted he turns over big slick and immediately picks up an ace on the flop. i don't improve and i'm down to ~T250. about 8 hands later i push with A8o and Al finishes me off with pocket sevens. i know the safe route would have been to call his re-raise and go from there seeing that i had a very good read as to what he was holding, but this time i wanted to take a gamble. unfortunately it didn't pan out. oh well, there's always next time. cya all at the BBT freeroll tomorrow.

I haven't been playing very much poker recently. I've played in the Mookie for the past two weeks with poor results, like last night were I ran my queens into RecessRampage's kings and was out in around 30th place I think. Had two horrible suck outs last Sunday both trying to get a tier one token. The first one happened in the token frenzy where some push monkey went all-in with JTs and hit a flush on the river to beat my big slick dropping me to the bottom of the pack. Then after fighting my way back I miss the payout two places short by the same idiot when I went all-in with KJs and his J7o caught a 7 on the flop. Un-fucking-believable. I lost a tier one SNG when my tens were beat by sevens, just minutes after my frenzy loss. Damn this game is great. So nothing much else to talk about this time. Hopefully I'll start to play cash games again and turn a profit, but I doubt it with my luck.

Hiatus

For the past week I have been in remission, not having a real care in the world and slacking off when and where possible. I started the week by playing hooky from work Monday and Tuesday because I just didn't have the motivation to go. Waking up and having a feeling of utter disappointment that the job you have is a retched demon slowly sucking the life out of you day by day can cause such actions. I keep asking myself if this is what I really want to do with my life and the responses so far aren't pleasant. My job isn't necessarily hard, it just lacks the challenge and structure that I need. I know I need a new job, that's undeniable, but my problem is if I should continue in the same field or should I try to find something else with which I have more of a passion. This is going to take some time to figure out.

I didn't play in the weekly blogger tourneys this week because I was just trying to make the most of my free time this week. I took time to hang out with friends I haven't seen in awhile and even took my dirt bike out of storage to clean it up and make it ridable again. I was glad to see it was able to start up with relative ease and it still ran well. It's also fun to piss off Mormons walking down the street as you ride a bike right next to them, haha. Sorry about that fellas.

I do plan on playing in the blogger tourneys here again. Maybe I'll make it out to Katitude's donkament tonight and have a little fun. Depends on when my parents plane gets in from London tonight tho. They're coming back from a nice vacation and I have to go pick them up. Well that's about it for right now. I know there wasn't a ton of poker today but hopefully that will change soon.

Interesting Night

Well I just just got finished playing the $26K Guarantee and what a crazy show that was. Early on in the tourney I lost half my chips and was just waiting for a good hand and then came along a gem to keep me in the game.

Yes thats a Royal Flush ladies and gents. Not only is it a Royal Flush but it beat out a flopped boat to help me get back into the game. Then about 15 minutes later I got another crazy hand.

Yup flopped quads and got me another nice pot. Shove a horseshoe up my ass and call me lucky. I've never seen that kinda luck before. I just wish it would come around a bit more. But I'll take what I can get, unfortunately I didn't get anything else to help me out later in the tourney and I went out in 121st place, earning $40. I really want to get better at these MTT and by the looks of it, I might have the chops for it, maybe.

I also had a great run in the $75 token frenzy basically staying in the top 10 for most of the time and even hitting number one for a few minutes. When the token bubble came around I was sitting in second and easily cruised my way to a token. Now I can play in the blogger big game this weekend. I hope some of this luck from tonight makes it over to that tourney. See you all there.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good...

Last night I played in the weekly blonkament hosted by Katitude. It's just a laid back $1 rebuy tourney where the bloggers just mess around. For the first hour I got some good hands and build a sizable stack without having to rebuy. The rest of the time I just tried to play good poker and I think I did pretty well, I believe I only had one suckout so not too bad. When all was said and done I won the tourney. Yup, another blogger tourney under the belt. Geez I'm such a lucky donk. Well that was about the only good so far.

The Bad...

I think I'm down over $100 for the past 48 hours at the cash tables. My aces and kings just seem to love getting cracked. Fun! I did play in a four Tier One SNGs and wound up winning 2 tokens, the bad part is I should have had three but suffered a huge suckout when my aces got cracked on the river.

And now The Ugly...

I decided to play in the Tier Two Frenzy tonight so I could have a $75 token ready for the Blogger Big Game next Sunday. I was doing great, I was 4/88 and then ran into this gem of a suckout:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mtnrider81 [Ad Kh]
mtnrider81 raises to 210
krs477 calls 210

*** FLOP *** [Qd Kd 5s]
mtnrider81 bets 510
krs477 has 15 seconds left to act
krs477 raises to 1,905, and is all in
mtnrider81 calls 1,395
krs477 shows [Jc Qh]
mtnrider81 shows [Ad Kh]

*** TURN *** [Qd Kd 5s] [6h]

*** RIVER *** [Qd Kd 5s 6h] [Jh] (OF COURSE!!)

So douche bag gets his out on the river. Instead of being in first and easily making it to the token payout, IGH a few hands later because I'm on huge-mega-wanna-stab-him-in-the-eye-with-an-ice-pick tilt. Gotta love this game sometimes. Ok, I'm done now.

I haven't updated this blog for two weeks now and for a very good reason. I was lazy. I took the entire week off last week and didn't do much except drink, hence the lack of posts. Between beers I did manage to go to the beach, play in a small tourney and make it to Vegas for a night. Vegas was a blast up until I got in a fight with a dresser and lost. I was so drunk that while getting into my hotel room I took a digger and smacked my face against the dresser in my room cutting my cheek and nose a bit. Thankfully I was so trashed that it didn't hurt and I just passed out right after that. Made it down to the Rio the next day to check out the WSOP and that was pretty cool.

I played a small $30 tourney at a semi-local casino last week. I didn't make the money and I probably only played three hands the entire time but it was still just fun to do. Whats funny is today I found out that one of the guys I played with last week just took third place in the WSOP Event #27 yesterday, so congrats to Seth Weinger. While playing in our tourney he was telling us how he gets to play in those tourneys for free because of his business, he sells card protectors, how nice is that?

Played in the MATH last night and what a horrible showing for me. In the first 15 minutes I got pocket queens twice but had over cards on both flops and had to throw them away. After that I was card dead for the rest of the time. Not one damn playable hand. I finally found two face cards and went all-in with those but ran into ATo and was sent packing. I know I need to try to just pick up blinds when I can but I didn't even have anything to steal with. Well I just need to keep practicing.

Close but no cigar

Played in the MATH last night and did pretty well but still not good enough. I made it to the final table but busted out in 8th place two spots before the money. I really need to learn to lay down mid pair cards. With eight people left and the blinds getting extremely high, I think most of the players had an M value of five of under which is nuts, I found 66 in MP and decided to raise and hopefully steal the huge blinds out there. Unfortunately someone raised all-in two after me and I had a decision to make. Earlier I saw this guy pushing with Ax a few times and hitting. I called figuring I was at least a slight advantage. He flipped over KQo and I made the right call but the AKQ flop sent me packing. Oh well, you live and learn. Now I just need to learn to get away from those races. I'm sure hoy and a couple of others have noticed that about me and my donk moves. Time to step it up and start playing smarter. At least the final table appearance helped push me up in the BBT leader board. I'm still trying to get into the top 25 and if my play keeps improving like it has I think that it's quite possible to achieve.

Quick Sunday recap: Played, loss a little bit. Played in a $5.50 MTT, got so tired of the donk races and horrible played that I decided to play Gears of War on my Xbox 360 while playing the tourney. Whats sad is I still made the money without trying, fcuking losers.

Ok, I'm really upset right now because it has now been close to a year now since my last trip to Vegas; very sad I know. What makes things worse is the World Series of Poker is going on right now and is something I would really love to at least go see. Also I keep reading how almost all the bloggers are going to be heading out to the city of sin. What sucks is I have all next week off because I needed a break from work but no money to make it out there. Right now I am missing the bright lights, gambling and debauchery that takes place. I need my fix but like most junkies I don't have the green. Maybe I can knock over a liqueur store to get me there...

Lazy Saturday

Well didn't do much today but play poker and didn't do to bad for myself. Here are the stats:

Date	Session	Profit/Loss
6/2/2007	$.25/$.50	$18.25
6/2/2007	$.25/$.50	$36.10
6/2/2007	$.25/$.50	$17.20
6/2/2007	$.25/$.50	$30.65

Recap #1

Well yesterday was the first day of my $40,000 challenge. Ha, that sounds so funny, like I'm some big shot. Yeah right. Alright, the first day wasn't so bad. I was up the entire session, however I ended only $30 up at the end. At one point I was a little over $50 up, but a couple of bad hands subtracted from that. I was rather upset because I played for just over four hours and not many good cards came my way, but at least I was able to make the most of what I got. The only interesting hand of the night was this one:

Table Florentine - $0.25/$0.50 - No Limit Hold'em - 1:14:51 ET - 2007/06/02

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mtnrider81 [Qc Qs] (I think this was the 5th pocket pair I've had in 3 hours)
GGreen folds
VulcanRush calls $0.50
kj0820 folds
Run You Over 22 folds
DRRAVEN calls $0.50
GREATMAN222 folds
mtnrider81 raises to $2.50
ritman4life calls $2.25
bennyc1777 has 15 seconds left to act
bennyc1777 folds
VulcanRush folds
DRRAVEN folds

*** FLOP *** [9c 8d 8c] (Not really scared with this flop)
ritman4life checks
mtnrider81 bets $5
ritman4life raises to $10.75, and is all in
mtnrider81 calls $5.75
ritman4life shows [9s Js] (Yeah I've got you buddy)
mtnrider81 shows [Qc Qs]

*** TURN *** [9c 8d 8c] [9d] (Are you shitting me?!?!)

*** RIVER *** [9c 8d 8c 9d] [Qh] (HAHA, resuckout bitch!)

*** SUMMARY ***
mtnrider81 (button) showed [Qc Qs] and won ($26.60) with a full house, Queens full of Nines

Shuffle Up and Deal...

Well today marks the beginning of the World Series of Poker and with it comes all the great coverage from the talented bloggers, Dr. Pauly, Change100, MeanGene, and others. I'm gonna look forward everyday to hearing from them and they're experiences during this great event.

Today will also be my beginning of a poker challenge to myself. I'm gonna try to take $150 and turn it into $40,000. However, knowing my donkey playing I'll be broke by week's end, but I need to try and see what I can do. So everyday I play I'll put my stats up here and try to give any recaps of good plays, bad beats or questionable hands that I come across. Wish me good skill, and even a little bit of luck cause I'm gonna need all I can get.

It's Time for a Challenge

"You accomplish victory step by step, not by leaps and bounds."
~Lyn St. James

Well it's the end of the month, time to reflect on the past 4 weeks and set new goals for next month. Ever since the beginning of the year I have been trying to get into better shape, gain more weight and increase my endurance. However, in the past couple of months I haven't been keeping up with my workout schedule like I should be. It's time to get motivated again. I'm giving myself 3 months to get myself to my first weight goal. That's 2160 hours to gain ten pounds. Eating at least 2800 calories for 90 days straight. Now that might not sound so hard but I'm trying to do this right by eating properly and not stuffing myself to the point of discomfort. I'm a skinny guy. Always have been. And I'm tired of it. But I don't want to plunge myself into an unhealthy eating habit. So to help me achieve my goals, here are my mini goals for the month of June:

• Eat 2800 Calories a day; 20%-Fat, 40%-Carbs, 40%-Protein
• Workout at least 3 days a week
• Run for 30 minutes each day
• Drink 8 cups of water a day

Footnote: For those of you geeks like me out there, today is a blue moon for those of us in the western hemisphere. Just a useless fact to know.

Understanding frustration

Recently I've been reading other blogs about the wonderful donkerific play that is out there and seemingly more common now. After reading those posts, I've started to notice more of what these bloggers have been talking ranting about and am now starting to understand their frustration. It's no longer about trying to out play your opponent but rather get all your chips in there with just a coin flip opportunity. 'Come on in and let the gods of chance take over and leave skill at the door, donkeys welcome!' (Hey I think I just found a title and tag line for my blog)... Now I totally understand that at times there is the need to push and times when you need to chase because of the odds, but pushing all-in with AJo when you have an M value of over 10? Where's the skill?

Last night I decided I would play in the $20K guarantee on FTP to see what kinda chops I had for a large MTT and after playing in this tourney I now know why bloggers get so peeved. Luckily I wasn't on the bad end of any of these bad plays that where out there this time, but I witnessed so many of those plays that it astounded me. So many coin flip pushes it made my head spin, or maybe it was the beer, hard to tell sometimes. I had a lot of good hands last night that are worth showing here but I'm not very coordinated at that yet so I only have one right now, and I only got that one because I was so blown away by it. I was in the SB with two MP limpers and I had AA so I raised it to 5x the big blind, both players call. The flop comes out Kh 9c 3c and I immediately fire out 80% of the pot hoping that one of them had KQ/KJ and maybe get the other out. I was surprised to see both of them call, so I guess one had TPHK and the other had a flush draw. Turn comes out and is the 3h, now I'm pretty sure none of these guys have a 3 so having them both covered, I decided to push the rest of my stack and just try to take it down. I was surprised to see them both call and then horrified to see both of them had nothing and were chasing two different flush draws, one for the clubs, the other for the hearts. And then the river came...


Thank the poker gods! I dodged a double flush draw bullet that helped me to nearly triple up in one hand and help me get deep into the tourney. Now I'm not the greatest poker player, which I've said before, but was it really beneficial for them to call my bets? I know no one reads this blog but if anyone has some comments on this hand I'd appreciate it. Were these guys total donks or where they making decent calls based on value? Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter, I went on to place 81st out of over 1400 players and getting about $70 for my time.

Well it's Wednesday and you know what that means, Mookie time! I hope my play continues from yesterday and I can at least make the final table tonight, maybe even get into the money. Even tho stud isn't my game, maybe I'll even play in the Dookie tonight if I'm feeling a little squirrelly.

No Frenzy Place for Me

Last night I decided to play in the Tier Two Frenzy last night to win a token into the Blogger Big Game on Sunday as suggested by AlCantHang. It was a good suggestion because most of the players are donks and you can get deep into the tourney. Unfortunately I missed the token place by 13 places. Had a bad suck-out with 45 players left, top 25 getting a token, which had I won, would have secured a token for me, but ended up leaving me with under 300 chips left. I went all-in 4 times and hit some crazy hands before finally being taken out in 38th place. I did notice several other bloggers out there trying to win a token too but everyone had suck outs as well and none of us got a token.

I'll try again tonight to win a Tier Two Token by playing the 18 player Tier One SNGs and using that token to play in the Tier Two SNGs. I would really like to play in the Big Game because if the bloggers play this well with just $11 & $26 on the line, I wonder how they'd play with $75 on the line. This should be good.

Through all of this I've been donkin around in the $.25/.50 NL tables trying to get more practice and maybe some more money. I really would like to be able to play higher stakes so I can get away from these complete idiots sometimes.

Wednesday is one of my favorite days. And why is that? Cause it's Mookie time! I've been addicted to this tourney ever since I first played and won the whole thing, throwing me into this whole new world of poker bloggers. Thank god for that cause it's been fun ever since. I just hope I can make it into the points again. See ya at the Mook.

The curse...

I swear, if I win a tournament, I have a poor showing for several tourneys after that and the past week was no different. After winning the MATH last week I haven't even been able to get into the points in the blogger tourneys. Last night I was rather card dead for the entire tourney and finally went all-in UTG with Big Slick and ran into Kings. Perfect. I believe I was knocked out two slots from the point bubble. Even better. So for a third time in a row, no points for me. Fan-fricken-tastic! I really need to get some better placings so I can stay in the top 50 and make it to the freeroll at the end of tourney battle. Well hopefully the Mookie will my turn around point.

Well that sucked

I had a poor showing in the Mookie last night, getting railed only 45 minutes into the tourney. Fortunately it wasn't by any bad suck-out, just poor play on my part. I got into a battle of the blinds with SirFWALGMan when I ran my pocket queens into his pocket rockets. I know I'm still learning how to read people and figure out how to play, but I truely didn't expect to see aces. At first I thought he may have been just defending his blinds with a AK or a mid-pair like TT or JJ. Looking back I now know I should have folded after Waffle raised my 900 chip bet, but hind sight is 20/20. Just another lesson to be learned and hopefully it helps me.

On a side note, BevMo has a horrible cigar selection. I went there last night cause I felt like picking up a nice wine and while there, since I haven't smoked in quite awhile, I decided to pick up a cigar. Yeah, what a horrible mistake that was. First off they don't carry enough of the better brands out there, like Arturo Fuente, and what they did have was extremely limited. Almost everything was a Natural and some Robusto, hardly any Maduro. Even size selection was weighted on Churchills. After standing there for ten minutes I reluctantly decided on a Romeo y Juliet Rubusto, I don't recall the name right now. Not a very good smoke in my opinion, but it satisfied my craving.

My trip to BevMo wasn't a complete waste, I did pick up a very nice Pinot Nior while there. It was Frei Brothers 2005 from Russian River Valley. This bottle was very strong on first taste, but after letting it breathe for awhile it became smooth and and a very nice drink. I couldn't appreciate more because I only had one glass. I didn't want to ruin the taste while smoking so I switched over to some good ol' brandy. Then sat down and tried to play in a MTT to make up for my bad Mookie place. Not much better there, went out in 80th out of 359 players, but that was some bad play at the end on my part and I deserved that place.

Took down the MATH!

Not much to say, it's pretty much self explanatory. I think I played pretty well throughout the entire tournament, even tho MiamiDon would have a few words otherwise. He folded TPTK thinking I had a set on him when I really didn't have anything. I know it wasn't the greatest play but I'm a bit aggressive from time to time and it payed off that time. I did however throw down the hammer hard during the final table which was great. I'm not great at story telling so here's the gist. After being re-raised three times in a row pre-flop and having to let them go, I decided to re-raise pre-flop with the hammer, then went all-in on the flop and was able to make ChapelncHill lay it down to win the hand. Maybe sometime soon I'll learn how to recap hands better but I doubt it. I also won the bounty Julius_Goat put on himself which was cool. He was short stacked and went all-in and I knocked him out with my pocket eights. Thanks to Hoy and everyone else in these tournaments that are friendly and make them great to play in.

Well at least I'm finally moving up in the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments leader board. I know I'll never get in the top ten but if I can slide into the top 25 I'll take that as an accomplishment. These bloggers are some tough players.

Back Into It

Today is a good day. I'm finally starting to get back into the normal everyday grind again after a nearly three week hiatus. Last night I made sure I went to the grocery store so I could start eating right again, it's amazing how much affect that has on normal functionality. The past two weeks I've felt sluggish and dead to the world because of not eating properly. Not to mention I killed myself this past weekend with all the booze that I barely was able to function on Monday going to work. I'm not regretful of this past weekend because I had a great time hanging out with my buddies, hitting on waitresses, going shooting and playing the occasional game of Gears of War. However it's definitely time to focus on my goals once again.

I've already played a couple of tables tonight, $.05/.10 NLHE, and am up around $10 right now. I'm just waiting for the weekly Mookie to start right now so I can maybe try to get some damn player points for the Battle of the Bloggers. I haven't gotten any points yet and I've played in three or four tourneys so far; horrible I know. So wish me some good luck/skill tonight cause I think I'm gonna need all I can get.

Another Week

As I stated earlier in this blog I'm not much of an avid writer, hence the lack of posting here in the past couple of weeks. An old friend of mine came in from New Jersey for vacation and to see old friends last week and I spent some time hanging out with her and her friend that came out. The ladies mentioned before they came out that they would like to go wine tasting so I decided to take them down to the Temecula valley to hit up some of the wineries there. We ended up going to three wineries down there and we barely made those seeing as my friend decided to pound the wine she didn't like instead of pouring them out. So by the last winery she was pretty toasted which was rather fun to see although I think we scared out everybody at the last winery. The first two wineries we went to didn't impress me very much with their selections. The last winery, Stuart Cellars, gave a bit of fresh air with their award winning Viogner and a very interesting White Merlot. Now I prefer red wines more than white wines but I have a soft spot for Viogners, they have such a wonderful texture and taste to them that I don't get with other white wines. I think I may have to make another visit down there soon to pick up a bottle or two.

Saturday I hung out with my Jersey friend and her friends from Cali, which most of them are mine as well so thats makes it better. We went to downtown Redlands and hung out at a few of the bars down there. Nothing real special that night. On Easter she was having dinner at her best friend's house and I was more then appreciative to accept an invitation to be with them. My family doesn't really celebrate a lot of holidays together 'cause they're usually a bit busy to get together, so spending time with my friend and everyone there was real nice. The rest of the week my friend was taking in SoCal, going out to Los Angeles, San Diego and the usual. Luckily we all got to have dinner before they left to go back to Jersey on Friday. We all hung out at my place afterwards for about an hour, we said our goodbyes and then they were headed home.

What really sucks is that this will probably be the last time I will ever see my friend. She has been way too busy recently trying to start her life that it becomes difficult to even keep in touch. Hell, it's been three years since the last time I ever saw her, it will likely be even more now, if ever. Life sucks. I don't understand it. Ok, that's the end of my emo rant. I'm done now.

April Goals

Well it's the beginning of April and time to set some goals for myself.

• Gain 3 pounds, which means eat 2800+ calories a day
  
• Do week 6 & 7 of Couch-to-5K
• Bench 96 pounds in my workout regimen
  
• Leg press 375+ in my workout regimen

Well that's all I can think of right now, if there's more I'll add it later, but so far that's good. If I can make all those goals I'll be extremely happy at the end of April. Hmm, I wonder what my reward should be if I make all my goals...

BBT Kickoff

Last night was the kick off for the new Battle of the Blogger Tournaments over at the MATH (Mondays at the Hoy) hosted by Hoyazo. Unfortunately my first attempt didn't fair so well, I think I was out in 32 out of 47. Not good at all I know, but I hope to play in as many of these tournaments as possible because these guys are really good and I'm sure it will help me improve my game significantly. Now I just need to get good enough to place in some of those $26 token tourneys, it'd make it easier for me to buy into the MATH tourney. I also played a SNG last night where I placed 3rd, with a horrible suck out for that place (shoulda had 2nd), but at least I placed and that's the important thing. I also played a cash game but was messing around too much and I ended $7 down at the end of that. Lets just hope that's the last time that happens.

My First

Well I guess I should start a blog seeing as it's the cool thing to do and I want to be cool too. I've been reading more and more blogs recently, mainly poker related, and starting to get into the whole blogging thing. So instead of just being a lurker feeding off the thoughts of others, I thought I'd at least participate a little. I really don't have a lot to write about usually, so I guess the main portion of this blog will be dedicated to poker and other miscellaneous ramblings of mine; first of which should be introductions I guess.

For the main part I am a HUGE nerd and after many years of denial I am quite happy with that fact. I have a Bachelor's in Computer Science and am currently a web developer at a real estate service company. Not the greatest place to work right now but it's a start and I'm learning valuable things right now. I live in the armpit of beautiful Southern California in the Inland Empire, or IE if you're from around here. It's more commonly known to many Los Angelenos as the valley of the dirt people. I don't mind it, most people around here take pride in it, which shows you the mentality of the people here. But at least living in SoCal allows me to do lots of fun things when I get some time off: snowboarding, dirt bike riding, off-roading, and recently surfing. I'm not so good at the surfing, only been a few times, but definitely enjoy it and want to keep learning. As of recently poker has become a major time consumption of mine. I can't really call it a hobby because a hobby is supposed to be fun. I swear sometimes being kicked in the groin would be more enjoyable than some of the hits you take in poker. Currently I'm just playing low limit sit-n-go's trying to improve my game and try to move up thru the limits. I know I'll probably never make it big with poker but it's always fun to dream. Well I think that is mostly the gist of it. Hope I can keep this up, I've never been really good at sticking to goals.