Quite a bit has happened since the last post. My grandmother passed away a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, so I flew to CA to attend the memorial service with my family. My parents had tickets to fly to KY a few days later, so stayed a few extra days so could share the return flight with them. Having them here for Thanksgiving and my birthday was nice.
Poker-wise, my team clinched first place the day before the final game. We would have tied if we forfeited somehow (like entering multiple players, or not registering for the game) *and* if the team in 2nd got 1st place that game. I was #1 in the MVP race (based on average score) and risked my first place status by playing the final game. I only needed a 5th place to keep the title, but I went ahead and won it. :) My team was composed of half of the top 8 finishers (3 of the top 5). There were 35 players total. We had one other player, who managed a couple big scores (a 2nd & a 3rd) at the end to move up and finish in 34th place.
I'll be a team captain again next season.
I've been running a bit cold lately. I'll be short and make a standard shove with 6/6 in an unchallenged pot from the button or SB, and the button will wake up with A/A. Or someone will limp with Q/9s and I'll shove my 11bb's with 8/9s and they will call. I had a period where K/K was poison, but then I flopped quads Kings and someone was nice enough to shove with absolute air in an attempt to bluff me off the pot. But anyway, like I said, right now I'm doing a lot of standard shoves that get called by monsters or hands that were suicidal to call with.
Tonight: Some friends had a wedding anniversary to I helped (with another friend) babysit their kids while they had a night out. I was good to be around babies again, and fun to watch the little runts process things. I had a good time. When I got home I was bored and played a 9 player S&G, winning it. When I was short I did shove with 8h/9h in the SB and the BB called with K/4. I paired the flop though, and took down the hand to bust him. That made me chip leader with about 5 left. I lost the chip lead while heads up, but gained it back. In the final hand I had T/T and he open-shoved with 6/2 off. We were still too deep to bluff like that. I called, he paired the 6, but I won the hand and the game.
Push ups: I'm probably going to be a set short today. Oh well. I have been keeping up with my routing though. I strained a tendon in my right arm so I've been taking it easy and am not doing any of the trickier stuff. I'm just sort of maintaining the same routine I was doing before.
In the team games, yesterday the #1 team got last and we had a middle finish, so we gained ground. Today we got last and they had a 3rd, so they're even more ahead than at the beginning of the week. I'm not super-confident about our game tomorrow, but Friday I'll be playing my A-game and hope to even things out.
Actually... honestly... I hope I get heads up with that same guy again, even though he's the biggest threat to my team. It would be a blast.
Exercise: I started doing push ups today. I've been off about a week so I'm going slow. My back is still a little sore. I'm doing the minimum routine. I completed the first two, but had trouble finishing the third set because I got tired. I'll do the final set later tonight.
In earlier posts I mentioned that I've been doing the Perfect Push Up routine.
Based on my max, I'm supposed to be doing a 14/10/6 routine. (14 push ups, quick rest, then 10, quick rest, and then 6) However, I decided to start out doing them with my feet on a chair (making them harder) and I kind of pulled something in my back the second day. It's only slight, and I only feel it when doing push ups. So instead of doing them on a chair I started just doing more. I was doing 18/14/8 and that strain wasn't going away and started getting worse.
A few days ago I decided that I need to stop for awhile and let myself heal. I keep looking at equipment and I'm eager to start again.
I find the push ups to be sort of therapeutic. I like focusing my body and mind 100% on something. It hurts but I'm in control of that pain, so it's nothing. Real pain comes in lack of control.
It's also a good time killer. I do four sets, every-other day, and each set takes two minutes.
So anyway, I'm writing this because I'm sitting in my chair, looking at my Perfect Push Up grips thinking "This is a perfect time to do a set" but I'm forcing myself not to do them.
Oh... I know what I can add. While I have a definite change in my triceps, and some slight change in my shoulders and chest, almost nothing was happening with my biceps. I read up on it and push ups do almost nothing for the biceps. ...but pull ups do. So I've been adding pull ups to my routine.
I use my spiral staircase and do them on days opposite of my push ups. Come to think of it, that might be a contribution to my sore back. It uses a lot of the same upper body and core muscles so I may not be giving my body enough time to recuperate. Tired muscles don't work like they should, which can put strain on other parts, which can lead to injury. So I should probably just do them all on the same day? Maybe?
Anyway, after fighting through it for over a week I gave up a few days ago and probably won't start again until Wednesday, which will be about a week off.
Whine whine whine...
Also, last night I fell asleep on the sofa, which left me with a soar back. ;) I actually slept really well, and I'm sure it'll go away quickly. It's times like this I wish I had my daughter here to walk on my back. Back when I was married I didn't ask for back rubs a lot, but this is one of the times when I'd probably ask. I guess single life some disadvantages.
Okay, a little poker... Last night I played two $4+$.40 Rush tournaments and only cashed in one for $6.75, for a $2.05 loss. Then I played two $2.10 super turbos and cashed in one for $3.60 for a $1.50 loss. This morning I played a $10.50 knock-out HU tournament (weird) and wont he first round for the $5 bounty, but lost the second when he shoved with 8/5s and I called (still with a big stack) with A/T and he made trips. Had I won that, he'd have been crippled and I'm confident I'd have won. Oh well. So that game was a $5.50 loss. So I'm down $9.05 in tournaments for the last 24 hours.
I have no plans for the day, so I may play a 6-max game that CardsChat is putting on. (Cardschat is the poker forum I'm active in).
For the past nine days I've been playing the Take-2 promotion by getting points at a $25NL Rush table. On Tuesday I lost about 4.5 buy-ins. A buy in is $25. It wasn't fun. I flopped a set of 7's on an A/K/7 board; he had pocket Aces. Twice I flopped top two pair and got rivered by a bigger two pair. One time I got all-in pre-flop with Q\Q in the small blind vs the big blind who had K\K. That's quite a deficit to come back from.
Today was the last day of the promotion. I finished with a $36.73 deficit. I'll be getting a $25 bonus for completing the promotion, so I'm down $11.73. I also paid $43.66 in rake, which I'll be getting 27% ($11.78) back from my rake-back affiliate (27%). So that means I have a $.05 profit!
I honestly LOL'd when I did the math. :)
If Full Tilt hadn't changed their Rakeback policy I'd have made a $3.78 profit. But oh well. Team Series: Once again I am a team captain for the CardsChat league. My teams normally have some pretty back luck, but this season my luck seems to have turned.
There are 9 teams of 5 players, and the games are each weekday. I have the same people playing each day of the week, for simplicity's sake. If we're in contention at the end of the season I might change things around, sitting out some players and giving others more games. Hopefully it won't come to that, but money-wise it's best for all of us. (The top teams get money at the end of the season. It cost us each $5 to play.) Scoring: Place Points 1 60 2 48 3 38 4 30 5 24 6 20 7 16 8 14 9 12
Were in week 3 of the 11 week season, and my team is tied for second place. Notice how my team name has arrows that mocks the other teams?
Oh... if you'll notice there is an MVP race as well, and soooooooomebody is in the lead. :)
In the three weeks I played, I got 3rd in the first game, 1st in the second game, and 1st in the third game.
That Justfives guy plays Fridays with me. He won the first game, and came in 2nd place the next two. That means I beat him HU twice. We played HU (Heads Up) a lot, and I mean a whole lot!
Yesterdays game: The entire game yesterday was 145 minutes. We started HU @ 22:04 and ended at 22:54, so we were HU for 50 minutes! HU and we had 131 hands.
Last Friday he and I played HU 20 minutes, for 42 hands, and I was raided by a pretty tight friend who told me mid-way through, "I don't know how you're still playing this. I'd have been shoving by now."
Anyway, I think I'm better heads up than the guy I keep tangling with, but in all fairness I've been getting more breaks than him. He is *not* apt to overplay so I have to adjust to that a bit, which makes the game last a bit longer. So I am more active and steal more, and have to wait to cold deck him, while making lay downs I wouldn't normally make. I think I can read him pretty well. He can probably read me to a degree, but I'm more likely to switch things up. Yadda yadda yadda... all said and done things went well for me.
Unfortunately, my team had a slow week this week, and #2, #3, & #7 in the MVP race are all on the same team so they have a significant lead.
Anyway, there are 8 weeks to go and weeks 6-9 are worth 1.5x more, and weeks 10 & 11 are worth 2x more. So we've just scratched the surface, but I'm really happy for now.
Had a good day. It was a losing day, but it was fulfilling, which is all that counts. Didn't do much, but billed a lot of people and got those stupid quarterly sales taxes files. I owe $9 and change this quarter for sales. It's not worth the effort IMO. I am a service based company, and do most sales as either a reimbursed expense with tax already paid. Oh well. Staying legal.
My brother spent most of last month touring various Caribbean islands, diving with sharks, etc. He made a friend who is moving to Columbia for a year. I guess his "dating" tips business is pretty successful ($3k per weekend).
Poker-wise... I haven't played much. I'm doing better than breaking even, but I'm not playing any sort of volume. Full Tilt has a promo starting Friday, so I'll play for fifteen minutes or so for a little over a week to clear that $25 bonus. It should be a cake walk. Points are doubled, and I need two bonus points (IE, two standard points) for 9/10 days to get the $25. Last time I think I had to get 100 points per day for 7 days to get $50, and I did that by triple-tabling for an hour a day.
I gotta go. I realized that I still owe myself one set on the Perfect Push Up. One set now is 14, then 10, then 6. These will all be with my feet on a chair, doing standard rotation. It's not as easy as it sounds.
I *should* be on a two day break, but I like the way it hurts, so I went ahead and added an extra day to the schedule. I might do another repeat day.
It does hurt too. Seriously, I drool and grit my teeth. But it's nice to give 100% physically at something.
Tonight... Several of us played a tournament together. Things were slow, which is fine.
Then I joined a $50NL ring game as well. Blinds are $.50/$.25. I posted my $.50, then immediately disconnected! I never played another hand in that game because I had connection issues and thought it best not to get involved in anything pricey.
I reconnected, played a few hands in the tournament, then disconnected. Then again. Then again. Etc.
One time a guy with way above average chips opened, I had vowels (A/A) so I re-raised half my stack. Then I disconnected. When I got back on... evidently he raised me, as I lost. Ugh.
Eventually I just started shoving any semi-decent hand, as I was short on chips and I couldn't count on being connected to play the flop, turn or river.
Of course, as soon as I was out of the game my connection problems ended.
Oh! And about me posting the $.50 and then disconnecting. It ends up everybody folded, so I won the $.25 small blind. :)
Last night... I played two single table S&G's (super turbos). I won one, and came in 3rd (min-cashing) on the other. That gave me a 100% win rate for the day. I'm happy to end with that.
Poker-wise, I had a long cold spell where I'd shove with 9/9-K/K, get called by A/rag, and lose. It got to the point where I just expected it.
I was still profitable, because every once in awhile I'd have a hot streak (when I'd get it in bad and win!) and take the tournament down for a big win. Well... there are $2 games, so the big win is $40, which isn't a lot for the number of hours I put in I guess.
A few days ago I played a $10+$1 tournament on a whim because a friend pointed out that it had a nice layover. They typically had 120-something players, and the top 27 people get a ticket to a freeroll that has $100,000 in prize money. And the top 2,000 players in that (there's a maximum of 10,000 players) move on to another freeroll that offers $250,000 in prize money to the top 5,000 players in a field of at most 20,000 players. For those unfamiliar with tournaments, most tournaments pay the top 10% of players. It doesn't take a genius to do that math. Oh, and first place for that final tournament is $20,000 cash and a Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4. (I have no use for a Lambo. I'd try to get a cash equivalent.) So anyway, if you played, the was a ton of extra money up for grabs, and about twice as many people win $ as normal. So it was a sweet deal that I didn't want to pass up.
The game went well. I won a couple coin flips in a row. My 60:40's held a little over half the time. I felt blessed by my better than average luck. I mean, by 50:50's were holding half the time. It was amazing! I got really lucky at the final table though. Three-handed, I had a cold run of cards and folded to become a very short stack, so I was apt shove at just about any time. Then the two massive chip leaders got all in together. The bigger stack had a weak Ace, an the other guy had a strong Ace (A/6 vs A/J or something like that). The big stack paired his weak kicker to knock out the other guy, thereby netting me almost $50 more.
I played one last night and lost a coin flip, which I don't mind. At least fate didn't screw with me like it screwed with these people:
In non-poker news, my life is weird.
A year and a half since the divorce was official and I remain very much single. Dating just seems like a big hassle messy and I just don't have the desire for that entanglement in my life right now. However, I am making an effort to get out of the house more and be more sociable for my own good and for the good of my daughter.
I had a bad weekend last week. I'm doing well this week though.
I started doing The Perfect Push Up a few weeks ago, and am following the exercise regiment. This all started when my daughter told me to give her ten push ups (what they do in her karate when the class doesn't pay attention) and I couldn't do 10. That's when I decided that I was pathetic and decided to purchase The Perfect Push Up. I wanted to get it a few years ago, but Danny Bonaducci was the spokesperson and I just couldn't support their decision to use him.
I started doing push ups before the kit arrived and could do a dozen or so by the time I ordered it and it arrived from Walmart. (They only sell them online, you get them cheaper with price comparison websites as opposed to the regular store, and shipping is only $.95).
On day #1 you see how many push ups you can do in perfect form with the kit. It's more difficult doing them that way, so I could only do about 9 I think. That meant that my program had me do a set of 8, then 6, then 4, then 2, all within two minutes. Then later that day I had to do the same thing with a wider hand positioning (and an opposite twist direction). And still later that day I had to do the same thing with a close hand position and the original twist direction. You always have at least one day off after exercising. Yesterday was my final normal day of the program. All sets had my feet on a chair (so I had more weight on my torso), and there were 4 sets total. 4(8+6+4+2) = 80 I had to cheat and get off the chair towards the end of some of the sets but that's what you are supposed to do. I guess it's important to complete them even with less weight.
Anyway, I've noticed results. I don't think I look any different, but when I'm soaping in the shower or feel my arms (especially my triceps) they feel different. One time I caught myself feeling up my own boobs in the shower. It was an unconscious thing, my unconscious mind looking for medical abnormalities to warn my conscious brain about. But yeah, there's something different going on under my skin.
They're just push ups and I'm not out to sculpt my body or anything. I just wanted to pick up a routine and get some more discipline in my life. I have an unofficial goal of being able to do 50 in a row. I think that will happen in early 2011.
Today was weird. I've watched some Jersey Shore this season while playing on the computer (none this week) but I had a dream last night that I was on the show, along with some of my cousins and my brother. We were at a beach house on the Jersey Shore. I also remember that the house was built into a Disney theme park, and there were women dressed in Santa's Helpers costumes doing a dance routine on Main Street. I was up at 5:00AM and so was one of the girls (I don't know their names... the toughest one, who doesn't whore it up) we I we watched them, perplexed that it would happen so early in the morning. Then we were all at Monkey Canyon, climbing the cliffs to jump. I didn't jump. I've only done the 8 or 10' jump there, and we were at the 20' level. Monkey Canyon is a place in the mountains where I used to go in CA. After a short hike there's a pool of water below some cliffs. People jump offs the cliffs into 6 or 7 feet of water. People have died making jumps from the upper levels of the cliffs. Then the dream ended.
This morning I was doing computer work when I heard a woman calling for her dog "Puggerson." I helped her look, but only found a long haired gray dog. She said "That's him!" I just assumed that the dog was a pug. How can you name a dog "Puggerson" and it not be a pug?
Later in the day I watched a video of my state senator wrestle an alleged shoplifter (beef jerky) in the grocery store that he owns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByzxIgI3IxQ I'd seen it before, but this time I watched it in the police station, with some cops seeing it for the first time. It was a hoot. :) I like how they gave commentary, like pointing out how he purposely put himself between alleged thief and the exit.
Tonight has been busy as well. I had a long tea party with my daughter, dinner, and they we played school until her bed time. I got dressed in my grubby clothes to mow the lawn but then I remembered that the mower is almost empty and I do not have any gasoline left in my gas cans. Oh well. The grass isn't incredibly long, so it can wait.
Saturday: Karate and construction (and food!) at my adopted folk's house (my in-laws). Sunday: Retest my "set max" for the next push up regiment, and pizza & beer during the Patriots game at a friend's house.
I haven't been doing much in poker. Last year I pretty much used it as a distraction. In 2010 I've cut down the quantity and upped the quality.
I don't follow it, but I looked at the CardsChat leaderboards today. I estimate that I play 1.5 money added games per week on CardsChat. I play the UB game half the time, the Sunday FT game half the time, and occasionally the Friday variety game on FT. So I figure I've played 35-40 CC games this year. According to the CC leaderboard I was in-the-money 9 times the first quarter (3 of them 1st places), and in-the-money 4 times since then (getting 1st place two of those times). Thats 5 1st places out of 13 cashes, out of 25-30 games. That ain't a bad run. Totally short term of course, but nice.
