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.