Went to LA for the weekend to go to this MMA event in Anaheim that Snowball got tickets for – turned out to be pretty awesome Affliction / HDNet fights card with Feydor crushing souls as the main event. Of course there was some poker too since its hard to be that close to Commerce and not stop in to say hi to all the animals – the LAPC only adds to the allure as the bigger games are starting up and lots of people are in town to see. Too bad then you remember they are going to sit in your games and make them generally tougher, oh well.

Wound up playing a long session in a 200/400 mix of hold'em and triple draw, maybe the greatest mix ever since its my two best games.  I estimate I won a good clip in the triple draw rounds and lost 75+ bets in the hold'em rounds, I seriously don't remember winning one hold'em hand, or really even having any hands. Except for one hand where I got the fish to go 8 bets on the turn with me on a Q84T board where he had QQ and I am not insane so I had it beat. He paired the board no problem in an 11k pot which was right around what I lost for the session, so I guess 8 hours of playing really does come down to one card sometimes

Home now and recovering from a surprising amount of live poker recently, these trips and excuses just keep coming up and I end up gambling. Too bad I am a huge live poker fish now and lose many a session. Online this month not much better with triple draw crushing my own soul for a change – gonna book the worst month of my poker career in probably less than 3k hands total and nothing higher than 50/100, that's pretty strong. Just reminds me to work on my programming and some DC work and not expect much from this silly game we all love!

My wife is running the rock n roll marathon in Phoenix this weekend so we decided to make a trip of it and see both our families in Arizona.  A couple days in Tucson and tomorrow heading up to Phoenix for pre-race festivities. I am tagging along, staying out of the way, and trying to sneak off to Casino Arizona whenever possible

I've been hearing about a 75/150 triple draw and/or mix game at Casino AZ so hopefully the rumors are true, that's around a perfect limit for fun times and I assume a pretty good game. Trip report to follow if they let me gamble!

This month has been pretty programming heavy, as we just rolled out some long awaited changes to DeucesCracked (what we call "version 2"). Over the last several months I learned a new programming language to actually assist in writing site code, which has been nice to help out and just for my own edification. We still have many cool features that aren't quite ready yet, but the cosmetic stuff is all in there now and on the live site. I've also been working on some slow enhancements to thehandconverter.com that are close to fruition.

I played a bit of poker this month, alternating between some holdem and some triple draw and a little badugi. I feel like the rare times I do play I'm doing great since I'm having fun playing poker as a hobby again and not so much relying on it. I expect to mix in a trip or two to Commerce this month with the LAPC starting and just random reasons to get to LA for a day or two. We are also going to Arizona for several days this month (wife running a marathon in Phoenix) and then a couple small trips planned in February too. I suppose the new year will be as random and busy as the last, but that's always fun. Hope everyone had a great holiday and see you in LA and on DeucesCracked!