Like sweet apple pie

Remember the good old days when shannon elizabeth showed her tits, poker was more legal in the US, and i played on my own dime? Ahhhhhhhhhhh the good old days. As ive been saying, since quitting poker my personal life has gotten a lot better, my financial life a lot worse, and im starting to get that itch back and cant wait to play for fun again, focusing on mtts. 

Well, shannon elizabeth now pretends to be a poker player, poker is only semi legal in the US, and i will be playing on staked money. That is right, i gave in to the itch, asked the guys who had mentioned interest in staking me if they were still interested, set up the basic guidelines, and starting on monday we are off and running. 

I will be focusing almost exclusively on 45man sngs 11+1's. I think this is best until i build up some profit for me/my backers, and get my groove back. Im looking to play between 15 and 20hours a week, and 12-15 games/hour. 

Its a new dawn, its a new day, and im a bit excited. It is getting me back into playing with minimal risk to me or my backers. I am not depending on the income as my bills are paid via my job, and i have always thrived in the poker world when my back was against the wall. (aka i have always been good at building/rebuilding a br, and a bit of a spaz when things had been going well) 

Dream scenario would be me making myself and my backers a fair amount of money throughout 2011 in the 45man sngs and topping the sharkscope leaderboard for that category in 2011. Nightmare would be going bust in a month. Per the usual, i will probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Gl 2 u, me, and my backers in the upcoming months

ahhhhhsht

jobbity job job job

If only communicating with deaf people was always this easy....well, if it was 1) id spend a lot more time in the deaf community, and 2) i wouldnt have a job....meh, win some lose some.

So i started work yesterday. Well i started training for a new job. First time ive done this in quite awhile and its about like everything else. In my head prior to starting i think it is going to be the greatest thing ever. Immediately after starting i remember how much working is not fun. And i also immediately think i am the best at it. In my previous warehouse job this happened and it resulted in burnout. This time however, i realize that this is what is best for and that it will provide a more stable and less stressful home life for me, and my new family. So off to work i go like im a lil munchkin in a funny hat with a sleeping princess who's slipper needs to come off at the house......

The job is kinda cool and for now it is challenging. It seems like ill be able to multi task while at work once im good at it. Basically what ill be doing after training is waiting for deaf people to make phone calls on a captioning phone. The deaf person talks into the phone which goes to a regular hearing person, and i listen to the regular person as they talk back with the deaf person. I then instantly repeat what i hear the person saying (i cannot hear what the deaf person says) verbatim and it goes into caption on the deaf person's phone. This sounds a bit easier than it is because the program that translates me into caption is very sensitive and it takes really good annunciation and some typing, and just learning a few other tricks. That plus learning to speak instantly as somebody else continues to speak. Its a bit challenging but once i have it down, i think it will be relatively easy, and there is downtime between phone calls in which we can read books or whatever, so i will have time to do my homework, which will be nice.

Poker is still not existent in my life. But the plan remains the same, except im seriously considering seeing if there is interest in staking me at first so that i dont have to put near as much, if any of my own money down. Im pretty sure this wont be a problem, and if it is, no big deal, ill just save up my deposit.

So that is that, and ill be posting another non poker content poker blog here shortly

Gl at the tables

Ahhhhhsht

Marriage, work, school.......poker

Thats about the order of things in my life right now. Which is progress cuz the last few months poker hasnt been on the radar. I thought i was doing the right thing when i quit playing so that i wouldnt put my wife thru the emotional swings i went thru while i dealt with the financial variance of playing poker for income. But it has put a big emphasis on income, as in ever since i havent had any. Well after 4months of no income, were a bit tight with money, but its ok cuz i start my job in 6 days and we can make it the next few weeks if we just live a bit frugally. So marriage is good, work is good, school is the focus of this blog.

I talked my las vegas teachers into letting me do independent studies to finish up my AA. Its going fine and will be literally no problem to get thru the semester and get my AA in secondary education. The problem is, im watching my dad who was a tenured science teacher in arizona, struggle to find work full time out here, and its making me think maybe a high school history teacher isnt the best choice at this time. My entire time in college i have swayed back and forth on what i want my major to be, and that might work out for me here. I have just over 73 credits and obv some of them dont work with my secondary education degree, but will work with my new degree. After a bit of research i think im going to be putting the Teaching degree on the back burner while i pursue a degree in Finance. Finance degrees have a high straight out of college hire rate, as well as a great introductory starting pay, and a high ceiling as a career. Im decent at math and enjoy learning about money and financials in general, so yeah i think this is what ill be going for.

So the next dilemma i have is where will i be attending and getting my BA from. I am living right near the university of wisconsin so that is an option. I think my only other realistic option is University of Phoenix. Im leaning U of P if i can attend there and still get my housing allowance via the GI bill, if not then U of P isnt even an option tbh. But if i can then i will probably attend u of p so that i can finish my degree faster and get to work. Also its a smaller class/school size so i think that will cater to my needs of being a full time worker while attending college more than U of W would be able to. I also think id have to wait until a minimum of August to get into U of W where as i could start U of P in Jan most likely. That would get me my housing allowance and mean that i wouldnt have to but could work a 2nd job or play poker and do school and full time work. BUSY but as ill soon reveal worth it.

So thats where im at, im waiting for our living situation to settle down, my job to start, our budget to get in line and then deposit a bit on stars and start my plan. I got to play a bit of poker this weekend (i had a bit on stars to withdraw and since some of it was transfers i had to play some hands in order to withdraw) I did good, felt focused and won a bit more, and it really got the fire burning in me. Im really looking forward to the challenge of starting over again in poker, and will be interesting to see how i do.

how bout a lil MFK for old times (F 2 obv)

The losing ur edge

The poker community is funny. When i started out online, NOBODY was good. Even the big winners were bad compared to the average player now. I won some money, lived in vegas, so i thought id give live poker a shot. This is when i really started taking poker seriously. I was young, full of fire, thought i was the best at everything and was pretty sure id make massive amounts of money at the tables. It was around this time that i started noticing trends with players.

Poker is a game that requires no certificate, no degree or something that is hard earned and separates the avg joe from a professional. Literally the best player i know personally, im talking crushing every game he plays at nosebleed stakes, has no degree and comes off as not too intelligent. When wed hang out id try to pick his brain and more often than not it was "i dunno bro, i just feel like this" No big math reasoning, no ranges bla bla bla, just "i feel"

Then you get these guys who talk on and on about how smart they are and come off as well educated and just light years ahead of everybody and thats why they win. I saw the same thing in the warehouse i worked in. People who are intelligent but work a job that requires no formal training try to make their job seem as if its hard and requires more than it really does.

I got the best of both worlds, in my live and online communities. I applied the knowledge and observations i had made as best i could, and after 2.5 years of not making it big and making just enough, combined with getting married and not wanting to be stressed out, i lost my edge. I dont have the drive anymore to play thru the swings, the constantly questioning my ability despite a large sample size that says i can beat these games. To me its not worth it.

And the more i look into it, the more i realize that the real winners in poker are these instructors. The ones who luckboxed their way into a good gig that makes them more money than their actual playing does. Sometimes these guys are marginal winners at best, who just market themselves amazingly and live off that and bonuses.....That was a slight dig at u mr barone, but i cant lie u are one of the few who crushes the games u play as well. =)

During this break i have been putting things in perspective and perhaps my posting with venom has slowed a bit too. Im happier now. I have a great growing marriage. It feels good to get back in the job market again, to feel that im adding something to society. But fear not, when some idiot posts something retarded (heres looking at u garrywhite)  i can still turn back the clock and light some ass up.

Peace out A town down

ahhhhhsht

Aye yaaaa!!! Why so long?

In b4 "thats what she said" joke....


Sorry to my loyal readers for taking, what like two months off of blogging? More extended breaks to come unfortunately. I chose a shot at marriage vs continuing to chase a dream and now ive withdrawn all my poker money and spent it. I currently moved to wisconsin in pursuit of a real job with my wife and its looking promising. That life is going great at the expense of my poker life. I dont regret it though, not even a little bit

I am however getting that urge to play again. Im going to resist the urge. Ive had a few staking offers, and i could scrounge up enough to jump into the games i want to play when i do come back, but for now id rather focus on my new life as a working man/part time player.

Because i really love this blog and i miss writing it like i am a somebody, and my friend's strongman blog has taken off and pathetically it made me wish i was playing so i could try to get picked up like he did, ill try to pointlessly update this blog with my plan/how my life is going until im up and running again and start my new journey.

Ive decided that cash games are too tough and when i do come back because i enjoy them more and ill be playing for enjoyment, i will come back playing 45man sngs. I will do one of two things, first i will utilize my wife's acct to "teach her" and clear a 600 bonus from ftp. I will withdraw and then move over to stars with between 1200 and 1800, depending on how the bonus clearing/my irl finances look. With that br i will play pretty exclusively the 11+1 45 man sngs. I dont want to play the 180s on a 100bi role because the variance is so sick. So i plan to grind up the 45man sngs until i have 150-200 buy ins for the 180's and 45mans. I will then play those and a few of the turbo mtts at the same time until for the foreseeable future, attempting to make bonuses maybe even supernova as a parttime player. Im sure once im in the 3k range i will start having mtt days once in awhile, but maybe i will try to regulate that to sundays.

That is a rough outline of where im at, and where id like to be. Some big things have come into my life and poker is just on the back burner, but it is slowly creeping back into being a passion and if that comes true than this extended break will have paid dividends already.

Peace out, A town down

Mr. Sht