This week I don't have school, which seems sort of typical recently, but this is apparently my spring break. I am definitely using it to take a break, as I have barely logged any hands of online poker this month. I have been playing live a bit more which is sometimes fun and sometimes the most frustrating experience in poker.

This week I have slacked off playing, but managed to get in one session at Commerce. Jumped into a shorthanded 60/120 filled with fish and ran hot to get up 6k after a few hours. Six hours later I'm stuck 1500 and hating life and the game turns bad and we leave. I did get some experience playing with 100/200 players who were slumming in the 60 which bolsters my confidence for the Commerce 100/200 because those guys are not good at all.

Today I went to the McDonald's High School All American game with my brother which was a ton of fun. We only knew one player in it who is going to the U of A next year and is a San Diego kid so everyone cheered for him when he did anything. Any flavor of basketball is fine by me so I had a great time. I came home and played some online poker for the first time in awhile as a 100/200 game was going and looked nice and juicy. I pretty much broke even but remembered how to play so its a moral victory. Later I played 10/20 on Party which I still cannot beat.

Looks like we are headed back up to LA tomorrow for more live poker action and a home game. I'm also waiting to hear back about a home loan and maybe we'll be looking at houses by this weekend!

Some friends came in from out of town and stayed with us for the weekend. As a result, I conveniently failed to play any poker which is becoming quite a bad habit this month. With the month about over I have just barely logged 10k hands and I have shoddy results to reflect that. On the plus side, we spent all weekend doing the many touristy things there are to do in San Diego. We did Sea World on Friday and Seaport Village and the beach on Saturday. I managed to cram some March Madness watching into the weekend but that's about it.

Tomorrow we're meeting with a real estate agent which should be fun and hopefully we can get the ball rolling on some sort of house plan in the near future. I'm supposed to go to the McDonald's high school All American dunk contest tomorrow and the game on Wednesday night with my brother which should be awesome. Maybe I can grind out a few thousand hands in the next couple days as well and winning would be cool too. Here's hoping..

So an update is long overdue but like most things I quickly tired of journal writing – luckily I get random urges from time to time and having started this thing I do feel some obligation to carry on with it.

I believe I left off foreshadowing a fun Vegas trip with my fiancee and some friends. The trip was a roaring success in my opinion as we packed seven people into a luxurious room at the Bellagio and then proceeded to split up for most of the weekend into smaller clusters of tourists and poker afficionados.

The first day/night in Vegas was just my fiancee and I but we were entertained by a fantastic dinner with an out of town friend who happened to be in Vegas concurrently and his fiancee. I finally found out where Prime is located in the Bellagio and had a yummy steak dinner. The next day my fiancee and I did some fun touristy stuff on the strip and I taught her to play craps which she took a quick liking to! Another degenerate gambler born, we immediately made money at a -EV game.

All our friends trickled in that night but then most of them were busy the rest of the weekend with non poker events so it was just myself, and two friends from Tucson, one who was in Vegas for the first time! We were able to play some low limit poker at Bellagio, Wynn, and MGM so hopefully he got a taste for all the poker rooms Vegas has to offer (only the Mirage is worth a look besides those three in my opinion).

I managed to squeeze some short sessions in at bigger games over the entire weekend and pretty much could not lose. I played more 60/120 and some 80/160 for the first time and never played a session longer than two hours until a massive 40/80 triple draw session at the Wynn late one night. All those hit and runs allowed me to leave Vegas with more than I came with after expenses which is really all one can hope for.

Back at home I had some school business to finish up with and take a couple finals. You may remember my concern about failing at least one of my grad classes this quarter which I remedied right before Vegas by dropping the class! Of course I'm on track to be a permanent student but avoiding failure is just like success, right? Anyway I got through my finals and awaiting the damage as well as a somewhat big decision about whether to continue on with the charade I am calling grad school. Basically if my grades were decent I have a chance of getting off academic probation which would leave the door open for me to continue next year or take some time off in good standing. On the other hand, if I didn't improve my GPA with this quarter's classes or lower it further, there is no point at all in paying money to return when they will probably stop me from returning come summer anyway.

Now I have some time off (and maybe forever!) so hopefully I'll get some more pokering in this month as I am really slacking – only 10k hands logged online. That is also showing up in my bottom line as it looks like my run of great months can't last. Also I'm very excited because we might be moving forward with buying a house in the near future and accomplishing that goal would really make me feel like I'm moving in the right direction, school or no school.

Until next time, and hopefully next time will not be so far away as this time was from last time.

I vow to update this more frequently. I have a final tonight and then lots of free time. I need to catch up on the last Vegas trip as well as my tough online month. Soon I hope…

I'm still slow on this updating thing, but this time I have an excuse. I haven't seen my computer nearly as much lately since I've been hopping between cities playing poker at every stop. Last weekend I did the Vegas thing with Jason and Bob. I learned that I really enjoy staying at the Wynn, as the rooms are on par with Bellagio and they treated us wonderfully in the poker room. I don't think we paid for a meal while we were there – just lots of tipping.

I played 60/120 there which is the highest I've played live. I also got more buried in that game then I have ever been, at my deepest I was in for 11k. I wound up making a disgustingly huge comeback in the early morning hours shorthanded and was a small winner after day one.

I played the same game the next night and wound up just running hot right away. I also found myself in a beautiful spot where I got to play heads up with a tilting bad player at the must move table and I couldn't miss. I did well in the main game too and ended up a 7k winner.

As I mentioned, we were treated great by the Wynn: we did the buffet for free and a few meals at their cafe. I had heard bad things about the Wynn buffet, but it was excellent. We almost tried one of the Wynn's two steakhouses, but getting a reservation proved to be difficult and by Sunday night nobody really felt like eating or paying for a huge meal.

For the last night we moved to the Bellagio, who's rooms I still prefer. However, there isn't much else the Bellagio has over the Wynn except for a bit of game selection in the poker room. It depends on your preferred game but it's not a huge difference anymore as the Wynn is picking up and hopefully soon we will have two equal choices for midstakes Vegas poker. I played a bunch of 30/60 at the Bellagio and got throttled. Despite the results, every time I play that game I realize more and more that the regulars are awful players. I almost dipped my toe in the 80/160 there to compare but I had on good authority the must move game was simply awful so I didn't bother after already getting stuck in the 30.

Flew home on Monday and did the school thing, which is a whole other story. Suffice it to say, I am still going, when it's convenient, but I have pretty much given up hope of passing and I'm not sure if I'll be attending next quarter. I was hoping to limp my way academically to the summer and then figure things out, but I might not have that option. I'll only be disappointed if I don't get another chance to teach, but I feel pretty good about my longterm plan to try and teach high school or at a community college.

Anyway, barely home for 6 hours and I got invited to go up to LA and see the usual LA crew as well as an out of town guest. So off we went the next morning, me on very little sleep. Wound up bouncing between three different casinos, where I won some money at each along the way. The trip culminated with our gang playing Chinese poker at Commerce and then triple draw. I think we proved that a bunch of young white guys can be degenerate gamblers too!

Playing triple draw with one good player and many fish I realized how much I enjoy the game and that I haven't kept up with it recently. I'm thinking I'm going to try and get an account going on UltimateBet for the expressed purpose of triple drawing it up. I hear the 80/160 games are incredibly beatable. We'll see.

Back home finally and I started my March playing online. Empire lives for now so there I shall remain. I'm intermittenly on Party with my new account but I haven't had a winning session there yet so I'm sort of hesitant to play there while I have better options. Also I need to run better there to build up the bankroll or else I don't have a way of getting more money in the account.

Looks like I have a bit of schoolwork to handle in the coming week and then another Vegas trip! I'm extremely excited about this trip as I get to share it with my fiancee as well as her friends and a few of my friends from Tucson. Since most of those friends are normal people, they are less familiar with Vegas, poker, and the Bellagio than myself, so I'll get to be the host / tour guide. Hopefully everyone will have a great time and if I come out of that trip with more money then I start with I'll be shocked and thrilled.