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.