Attention: Joel finally updated his blog!

Wow. It has been a while. I can't count how many times one of my 3-4 readers has told me that they wish I updated this thing more often. So, rather than studying for my last final tomorrow, I opt to write on my blog and share some thoughts.

Things have been pretty good lately, life-wise. This last weekend, my brother Pete came up, and we had some Bellingham adventures including him getting kicked out of a bar (obv) for stealing some guy's ID. We did, however, go to the Slo Pitch on Friday night and actually played sober. I felt like I played amazing but went 3+ hours without winning a pot when I moved to the main table :(

Saturday we drove back down and hung out at Paul and Ramie's, watching football and drinking a lot of beer. Derek and Bubs also arrived, and we busted out two fresh decks of cards and played Chinese. Every 10 minutes or so, someone would come up with a new rule that would basically just increase the stakes. I was up a decent amount when we decided to take a break and go to Sushi Land.

Then Derek and Bubs decided to buy dice and implement them into our game. This is where things get bad.

While walking back to Paul's place, I mentioned that I was running pretty hot and knew that a downswing was coming. When we got back, Bubs and I couldn't win. It was like the Chinese gods took a dump on our cards while Derek rolled the dice every other hand. What really killed was when I implemented a special quads and a special straight flush which would allow that person to roll double the dice. Derek and Bubs each hit that once, which meant 4 rolls each at $5 a point.

The thing that broke the bank was the very last hand, where I looked down at a spade straight flush, which was the jackpot suit. I became elated, as this might be my chance to get a good chunk of change back. I set my hand with glee, then Derek showed me his hand, and he had aces full, which meant that I was going to get bad beated. He was debating not playing aces full and instead play like flush, straight, ace high up. But because our game puts so much emphasis on the side action rather than who actually wins, he played Aces full, and I immediately went ballistic.

I lost an unspeakable amount of money, especially given the fact that I don't have a job right now and haven't luck-sacked a donkament win in a while. Not good. It is good, however, that Derek is nice enough to not put any pressure on me and even took 6 points off ($30 value) for getting him a burger and a pop at the Seahawks game (I paid like $11). It's cool to have nice friends who rape you for a ridiculous amount of money and then are caring enough to let you shave points off by buying them whatever they want.

After that, we went to play poker at a casino called Goldie's. Paul said I was on his tab, which was cool, but I obviously went cold again and couldn't win. I wasn't that drunk but just wasn't playing very well - limping then calling a raise with A9 and calling down on a A 4 3 x x in a spot where he had to have AK. I then called a UTG+1 raise from the SB with AJo (spewy) and paid off 3 bets on a J x x x x, and he had KK.

Derek and I left early and didn't get to see Pete run over the table while slow-rolling every single pot and subsequently getting kicked out. HAHA! His record of getting kicked out of gambling/drinking establishments is top notch.

Anyways, on the way home, I was feeling emotionally down because it seemed like things weren't going very well. I told Derek that I was so fucking sick of the highs and the lows of gambling and playing poker. It is so much fun to play when you win a tourney and are feeling good and stuff, but playing poker knowing that you need to win to have enough money to pay bills and stuff just isn't fun. He told me that he had been there before back in the day and that I have it better than most other college students. I told him that, if I could be in my current financial situation without gambling, I would feel good. But because I feel the need to grow my bankroll so I can be a baller and stuff just doesn't translate to good results.

Luckily I have people around me that want the best for me and that are there for me when things are good and when things are bad. I know that I have tremendous skill at playing poker and am just sorta in a dry spell. It is so tough to put in the amount of hands that it takes to show a large enough sample size when you are in college and when there are social things happening every night - not to mention school and finals and stuff. I am looking forward to break to be able to just relax and play whenever I want.

All that being said, I did subscribe to Cardrunners a couple of days ago and have been watching a ton of videos trying to absorb as much information as possible. Something that I have definitely improved on and have been thinking about just in the past few days is focusing on game flow. David Benefield had a video where he mentioned that he doesn't use Poker Tracker because it turns you into a robot and you don't focus on the players and game flow. I put in a session of 4-tabling .5/1 NL and didn't have poker tracker running and wasn't really looking players up but was just trying to concentrate on the table dynamics. What I mean by that is trying to:

A) Identify weaker players at the table and implement tactics to isolate and get heads up with them.
B) Look for spots to profitably re-steal. I have never really mixed in light 3-betting into my game, but it is something that has definitely evolved to become the norm in online live games these days.
C) Start with a strategy and wait until players start to react and adjust to my strategy before switching gears. I cannot even mention the importance of this. I do not know my poker stats from yesterday but I would imagine that I was playing something like 24/20 with a 3-betting percentage of like 7-9%. This is much more aggressive than I am used to but really started to pick up on the fact that, when you are changing gears as soon as the table starts to pick up on your aggression, this can be so profitable. I was able to 4-bet light a couple times the third or fourth time that a player 3-bet me, and I knew they were 3-betting me light because it was like the 5th straight button I had opened.

I can already start seeing improvements in my game, and, although I ended up losing like $80 yesterday, I over-played 2 big hands and played a $240 pot against a player probably playing 90/0 when I had 6 2 on a 3d 4d 5x 9x Ad board where I bet/3-bet the flop, then 3/4'd the turn then puked when I saw the river but decided to go for thin value only to get min-raised and pay it off. But at least these are things that I can tangibly improve on, which is exciting to me.

I just finished a paper for my history class and now have one remaining final in Environmental Economics tomorrow which shouldn't be too bad. After that, the plan is to hang around here in Bellingham for a few days and try to get back in the grinding mode before heading down to Seattle for break. I am really looking forward to it.

That's all.

God Bless,

JG