More Poker = Less Blogging

Well, I’ve figured it out… It had been driving me crazy. How come, all of a sudden, my blogging frequency had taken such a huge hit? Ahh yes, online poker…

Last year I went through basically the same thing. I was playing online almost every evening for hours and hours on end. Then, it got to the point where I was so fed up with it that I basically quit playing online and was only playing poker in live games or tournaments. When I look back at it I can see that when I quit playing online, the amount of blogging I was doing went way up. Here we are at the end of August and I’ve posted half a dozen times over the past two months… Gee, I wonder why that is?

I’ve been playing a LOT of poker online right now. And, the thing is, I’m totally enjoying it again. I’m sure it’s all a big cycle and I’ll end up hating it again in a couple months.. When that happens, I’ll quit again for 6 months and as long as the government doesn’t outlaw it by then, I’ll come back and get immersed once again.

Right now I’m playing pretty low limits. $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Texas Hold’em on Party Poker & $11 multi-table Sit ‘n Go tourneys on Party. I usually play 2 live tables and 1 SNG at the same time. I use software called Poker Tracker to track the players at the tables (it reads all the hand histories stored on the computer and then you can set it up to rate the players based on how many hands they play, how often they raise, fold, etc…) and I’m using pokerdominator.com to keep track of all my poker sessions. Since I’ve started back up I’ve booked winning sessions 66% of the time. And, my losing sessions have been minimal so I’m actually up a couple hundred since starting back at the virtual tables.

About 6 - 8 weeks ago when I logged back in to Party Poker for the first time in a LONG time, I found $100 in my account that I had apparently forgotten about. I had a couple of really good sessions and ran my account up to around $500. I then made the mistake that so many others have made before, I moved up to bigger games too quickly. Rather than continuing to play the $11 SNG tourneys, I started playing $33, instead. While it doesn’t sound like much, you don’t need to have too long of a losing streak to bring your bankroll back down to $0. I wised up and stopped the madness before I hit bottom, thankfully. So now I’m on a mission to build my bankroll steadily rather than going for the “Big Score.” My plan is to continue to play 2 live games and 1 or 2 $11 SNGs per night. If I finish in the money in either of the SNGs, I’ll consider playing 2 more. Otherwise, I’ll stick to the 2 live tables and see where that takes me. When my online bankroll reaches $1000, I’ll move up to the next limits. I’ll then set a new target and work steadily towards it.

Gotta run, I’m all-in.

A long drive for dinner

Two weeks ago, Chris and I drove around for an hour trying to find a place to have lunch. After pulling in to no less than 3 restaurant’s parking lots, we realized that the only thing we both really wanted was Captain Kidd’s. With us living in Vegas and Kidd’s being in Redondo Beach, CA, that’s not exactly a cross-town jaunt for dinner. So, we planned ahead and got us a hotel room in Torrance at the Days Inn on Pacific Coast Highway… I’ll tell you about it in a few minutes…

I left work around 3:45 on Friday and we headed straight to Captain Kidd’s. Got there right about 9:00. We called ahead and had some local crab cooked up for us. It was ready within a few minutes of arrival. Got some fried squid, cioppino & garlic bread, a beer and we were good to go! Had a great dinner, ran in to some old friends and then we headed to the hotel…

Gee, how to describe the hotel? Holy crap, what as shit-hole! The room was tiny, the mattresses seemed to be somewhere near 50 years old, the carpet was nasty, I found a flee on my foot 3 minutes after walking in the door, the TV’s remote had about 5 working buttons and 20 non-working… UGG!

We went to sleep as fast as possible so we could get through the night and leave in the morning. We got up and went to Jamba Juice and then headed over to a store that Chris loves to shop at called Mullberry Cottage. We then walked through the Del Amo mall for an hour or so and then headed back to Kidd’s for lunch with my grandma, my sister and her kids. I had the fish tacos and I can’t recall what Chris had.

After lunch we headed over to a friends house to hang out and chat. I started getting a bit of a headache and was feeling a bit under the weather. We headed over to my mom’s house for a quick visit and my headache continued to worsen. We decided to go back to the hotel to take a nap before dinner hoping that my headache would go away. No dice. I woke up around 7 PM and my head was KILLING me. We headed back towards Kidd’s but stopped for some Tylenol along the way. I took those as soon as we reached Kidd’s. It was quite busy in the fish market so it was very loud and was not helping my headache at all. We order a bunch of food (I had swordfish, shrimp & scallops. Chris had halibut.), ran in to some more people we used to know, and we were joined for dinner by my mom, dad & grandma. Luckily, by the time dinner was finished, my headache had mostly gone. We packed an ice chest full of fish, shrimp & scallops to bring home, said our goodbyes and headed out.

We stopped off at Penguin’s for some frozen yogurt. Though I’m not a fan of yogurt, it was still pretty yummy. Since I still wasn’t feeling great we decided to go to sleep early, grab some breakfast and hit the road. We went to the Original Pancake House in Redondo Beach. We found that they have opened up 2 OPH here in Vegas, but we’ve eaten at both of them and neither compare to the “original” in Redondo. Even though they keep the temperature of the building around 60, we had a great breakfast and hit the road.

When we were most of the way home, I mentioned that my back was hurting and that we should rush home and then head over to the massage school for an afternoon massage. So that’s exactly what we did. It was a great way to end a busy, busy weekend.

After all the driving we did last weekend with out trip to Legoland and this weekend’s trip to Kidd’s, I can say that I am traveled out and don’t want to drive any more than I absolutely have to in the next few weeks.

TV shows I actually enjoy watching

Wow, has it really been 6 weeks since I wrote here? At least!

Well, part of the reason for the lack of writing would be the World Series of Poker. Not only am I totally consumed with the action going on over at the Rio, I also got the opportunity to play in one of the events. Plus, the WSOP has rekindled my interest in playing online poker. I hadn’t been doing much of that for the past 6 months or so. I’ve been playing almost every night as of late, but, I think I’m about done with that again. It’s mainly a lesson in how to take bad beats.

Anyway, on to what I was here to talk about… TV. This is another thing that I just haven’t been all that interested in over the past year or so. I’m just not that big a fan of hardly any shows on TV. OK, I’m addicted to 24 and I picked up the show LOST (watching the first season on DVD and catching the second season on TV) last season. Other than those two shows, my time in front of the TV pretty much revolves around poker (surprised, I’m sure). But, even that has lost a bunch of flavor for me lately. I’d much rather be playing than watching. Plus, most of the shows are just all-in fests. Poker Superstars sucks. Celebrity poker showdown can hardly be called a poker show. The only poker on TV worth watching is High Stakes Poker on GSN. If you want to learn how to succeed in a high limit cash game, watch this show. No, STUDY the show…

A few months back we saw a commercial for a show coming on Comedy Central called Dog Bites Man. This show absolutely rules! It is my favorite comedy show on TV with no exceptions. If you have missed any of the episodes, I heard that they are available on iTunes. Stop reading this post and start downloading that show.

The other show that has become a new favorite is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Our buddy Charles had been telling us about this show for weeks. I finally set up Tivo to record it and I am NOT disappointed. I’m not sure if back episodes of this show are available anywhere, but if so, I must get them all. Danny Devito shows up in some of the episodes.

The other night we watched a new episode of Reno 911! This is another one of the shows that I used to watch regularly, but sorta stopped. I’ve solved that issue by ordering seasons 1, 2 & 3 on DVD from Amazon. They should be showing up first part of next week. I’m sure it’ll take me a year to get through all the DVDs…

I also went on a bit of a DVD buying spree over the past 2 weeks. I haven’t seen all of these yet, but when BestBuy lets you get movies for $3.99, $6.99, $8.99 or $9.99, I’m a sucker and have to stock up… Here’s a portion of the recent DVDs:

- The Transporter (haven’t seen it yet)
- The Transporter 2 (haven’t seen it yet)
- The Benchwarmers - Pretty darn funny
- Van Helsing (haven’t seen it yet)
- Get Rich or Die Trying (haven’t seen it yet)
- Poolhall Junkies (haven’t seen it yet)
- Spiderman (seen it in the theater, but not since)
- Jeff Dunham - funny, but not appropriate to watch with the kids (learned that the hard way, oops)
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Watched that this evening. I liked it. Thought it was funny when one of the kids in the movie was wearing a Fight Club shirt.
- The Truman Show - Actually bought this a while back. Haven’t seen it in quite a few years. Love the premise of this one.

I think that about covers it. Now, it’s 10:00 and I’m exhausted for no real good reason. I was going to try and watch Poolhall Junkies, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen tonight.

Oh, here’s a parting shot to make you feel old… MTV went on the air for the first time 25 years ago yesterday. Ouch.