Well this has been a fairly mundane week. I’ve played a decent amount of poker and won a bit of money, but a lot of breaking even and losses in new games has made it somewhat frustrating and extraordinarily boring. I’ve been trying to improve at some non-holdem games and I think I have stud/8 figured out ok, but my results have been horrible thus far. I have a friend who is a stud genius helping me out and he says I’m running bad and playing ok so I’ll just keep trying when I get sick of my normal holdem grind.
I’ve also been playing a bunch of triple draw this week – some background on my stellar triple draw career is needed at this point. I played on UltimateBet a lot and was around when they added triple draw to the site. I figured out how to play the game playing micro stakes vs horrible players, and eventually progressed up the food chain to beating the 1/2 and 2/4 players, some of whom played the game ok. I decided I was a triple draw god and since then never missed an opportunity to play the game live. I have probably played live triple draw five times, booking respectable to large wins every time at stakes from 10/20 to 40/80. All that has made me confident I am still a triple draw god, so this week when I was bored and looking to brush up on non-holdem games, I spied 5/10, 10/20, and 30/60 triple draw games going on UB and figured I was a clear favorite to wipe the floor with those guys and be in the 300/600 game by week’s end. $5k in the hole later, I am reconsidering my deity status and have sworn off mid-stakes triple draw for awhile.
We got the new house inspected on Thursday and everything went well. At this point we are just in waiting mode for our loan to come through, I feel pretty helpless and pessimistic but we’ll see soon enough I guess. One more day and I’ll take a look back at this month, but I already have a feeling that my “after Empire” results are going to be lame. Next month will be a better litmus test for how well I can expect to do at this pro thing.
So the Commerce trip was a disaster. I played bad, I got super unlucky, I lost a ton of money, pretty much everything went wrong. But it's a day later and I can think about it without emotion now and I realize this is how it has to be. I thought I was a 100/200 high roller after some immediate success there and that I was just going to sit and play and win there forever and that's just not the way it works. I know I can win in that game and I know one day I'll be sitting there and in bigger games and laughing about how I used to take my shots and lose and feel awful because that's how it has been at every step along the way. I'm just frustrated this month because with the house thing and me being a "pro" now the easy thing would have been to make alot of money and have it come easily to simply justify what I've decided to do and make our lives that much easier. But the heart of the matter is that this isn't an easy life – nobody else has one so why should I think that it can be so easy for me? And at the same time I have a lucky opportunity to do something that I enjoy, on my own time table, and make good money at it and a lot of people would consider it an easy life and from their perspective I would have no argument to disagree. It's funny the way poker warps our sense of what is fair and what we deserve – like if I don't win 20k this month I'll feel like it didn't go all that well which is just a totally ridiculous thing to write and yet that's how it goes after the way things have gone for me the last few months. It's a total joke and anyone reading this should realize I am a bad person for complaining one bit. And yet I am never satisfied…
Just realized I have had a lack of updates recently but every day has been fairly similar so I guess not too much to report. I've been grinding online pretty much every day and the week has gone fairly well. No major wins but small ones with no major losses add up just fine. Headed up to LA tomorrow for a two day Commerce trip which hopefully will be fun and lucrative. Escrow opened on our condo this week and we have much to do next week on that front so I imagine I'll find plenty to fill up my days.
I'm putting in the hours and melting my brain in front of my computer but the results have been less than spectacular so far. The 10/20 6max games are great but I'm beginning to think I have become accustomed to playing in games where the rake is more trivial and the swings are probably smaller. Here I am struggling to stay out of the red, but at least I'm putting some hands in. I sure would like to run hot for a couple days and have that 30/60 bankroll on Party poker ready to go, because good games exist, they are just more difficult to find than in the past.
On the plus side, live poker has been great to me recently. We trekked north again last night for more Commerce action. I got a scouting report on the 100/200 and heard it was "the worst game ever" so I played 60/120 which went pretty well. I straddled the breakeven point for several hours and then did my thing near the end winning two racks while showing down some suspect hands – 45 of hearts from UTG and 98o isolation play are two that come to mind… 
We have a plan to possibly make Commerce trips two day events starting next week if we can get the ok from all domestic partners, because its a long drive and a sad event to leave the Commerce donkeys at the end of the day. Twice the hours should be twice the fun!
Online grind time today I hope, Friday games might exceed all my expectations. Tomorrow I think its more live poker, this time lower limit San Diego casino fun with my brother.
I have quickly gone from boring mundane poker grinding and being lazy to being quite busy and, dare I say, productive the last few days. Anyone who may read this probably already knows that I quit grad school last week and am a true "pro" now, which I realize now I failed to mention in my last few posts.
Anyway, the busy stuff happened thusly: First, there was a Commerce trip where I accomplished the impossible – a winning live session. I tore up the 60/120 for several hours and I believe all four of the San Diego poker guys who came up won money, which is impressive even for us. The next day consisted of me losing copious amounts of money trying to figure out how to beat Party Poker but at least I am back down to 10/20 there so it doesn't hurt too bad to run awful, except my pride is badly wounded by any amount of losing.
Back up on Saturday for an impromptu Commerce trip because two Vegas guys were in town. We wound up quite a large group of ten, played at Commerce for awhile and then had a delicious Brazilian Steakhouse (Fogo de Chau) dinner and an always eventful home game. At Commerce I was persuaded to take a shot at the 100/200 and I sold off 20% of my action just for safety. I ran bad at that because I ran hot in the game and wound up taking three racks of the Commerce donkeys but owed plenty of hard-earned (lol) money to my staker. Next time its all me in that game, which means I'm going to lose huge, but I know I can play with just about anyone in that game.
Last but certainly not least, we looked at more houses / condos on Sunday and found the greatest most awesomest place near the water, brand spanking new. We put in an offer today and it was accepted a few hours later! Looks like the home ownership thing is going to be a reality. Something to focus for and work hard for – just on that news I grinded 3500 hands today and hopefully can keep a similar output going.
Not much to report in the last three days, I've pretty much been grinding away online. The month is off to a fine start though it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing. I feel much worse for a few friends having some big losses then for my own meager sufferings since I am winning at the end of the day. Also I met with our loan broker for a couple hours and now know more about home loans then I thought possible. We are moving along on that front quite nicely and should have a good faith agreement for a home loan in place very soon. We go back out on Sunday to look at some more places. Tomorrow I'm headed up to LA with the San Diego poker crew (trademark pending) and try once again to win at Commerce.
March is over and I'm very excited for April. For one, I'm hopefully going to get a lot more playing in and make some money. Also, we should have a much better idea of the future housing situation by the end of the month as I suspect we will be looking hard and maybe signing our lives away before too long. We went out and saw some condos and townhouses today and found a wide range of beautiful places all over town. It's going to be really difficult to choose between all the options out there, and also to reign ourselves in as it's very easy to think big and spend more money than we might have in the future. We did find one place we thought was better than the rest and we are going to do some more research on that. Not much more I can say about it yet but it has about a 150 degree ocean view from the back yard – nice!
Off I go to research houses and play poker. Oh and I did my taxes today which crosses a fairly big thing off my list of important stuff to do!