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.