The sickest cooler of all...

It's been almost 2 and a half months since Black Friday, and I would never have guessed how much I miss playing.  The closest casino is 30 minutes away, but I'm not old enough to play there for another 10 months.  The closest 18+ casino is 3 hours away, and I can only play limit there...

It feels like a huge cooler.  I was starting to get really good.  I had just bought a HUD and my profits turned green (consistently) for the first time ever.  My 12 year's spent playing this game and I had just begun to understand it... and win at it... and it was ripped out from under me.

It's amazing to me the standard citizens hold for when one deserves sympathy.  I mean, it wouldn't make me feel better, perhaps would make me feel worse... but it's amazing to me the amount of times I have received absolutely none.  In fact, I think I've actually been criticized far more often.  The game I love more than any other is taken away from me, and people have the nerve to call me an addict... they have the nerve to tell me that what I was doing was wrong.  How dare they.

If your reading this, remember that we should never hold back from protecting any minority's civil liberties.  Because it won't be long until it is you wishing your friends would help stand beside you and fight for your rights... if that day comes and they are not there... then you will know how I feel.

Black Friday

I only have about a month's worth of rent on Pokerstars and Absolute, so I'm still going to be able to eat at the end of this year...  I hope everything will end well, and I particularly hope that those who need this money to live on will be ok.

But financials aside, this is a deep blow.  Not only does it personally harm each of us, but it harms friends of ours, or at the very least, people we respect.  People who don't understand what we do, are criticizing us as if we're criminals.

One of the greatest problems, however, is the lifestyle they attacked.  I was looking forward to the SCOOP, but who knows if there is even going to be one.

I hope this gets resolved and everyone gets their money and we get to continue playing poker.

We need some run-good... now if ever.

meh

Well I've been on a terrible downswing lately.  I've almost erased all profit at the tables (although I'm still holding onto rakeback) but essentially poker has completely seized to be fun.  When moments like this arise I feel that it is really important to take some sort of a break, which I have.  However, tonight I felt like logging on to just play for fun (which is essentially me entering into a bunch of $1 MTT's and grabbing a bunch of beers).

lol whatever it takes to keep my mind in the right place :D

I busted in a $1 rebuy right before the money and am nearing the bubble in another $2.  Wish me luck!!!!1!!!one!!!!!

Donkey's can win too.

As I very poorly wrote on this table, the poor bastard at UTG+1 raised and I shoved on him.  Although dominated I hit quads on the flop.  To my knowledge, this is only the 2nd or 3rd time this has ever happened to me (hitting quads on the flop holding only one of them in my hand) and the first time to happen when I'm all in.

It's not a huge deal, but I thought it was worth posting.  Here's my graph for today:

For the most part, I feel my game has massively improved in the past month and a half.  The best part is that I know of areas in which I can improve.  Through many years of playing this game, I don't think I ever really thought much about how I can improve, just usually thought that getting experience was all I needed to improve.  Sure I was getting experience and improving, but I was not using that experience to its full potential.

Anyway, I need another 500 VPP's by the end of this month which should be relatively easy.  In March I get a week for Spring Break so I challenged some other poker players to a VPP challenge.  The details can be found here under Forum>Poker Discussion>March VPP Challenge: http://www.pokerpoopy.com/

Click follow on the left hand side of your screen!

Epic Story

I'll try to have more posts about poker since that is what this blog is for, but I thought some of you may enjoy this...

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                There were only two things that entered my mind after watching my front yard become illuminated with 2,000 bottle rockets on the Fourth of July.  The first was that we were going to do this again.  After all, such an amazing visual display couldn’t just be put into memory.  I felt we had to relive it.  The second thing that entered my mind was that we needed even more bottle rockets to ensure that this is something that we would never forget.

                As the next Fourth of July rolled around, the hype spread wildly through Facebook.  People couldn’t believe that someone would do such a thing.  Interestingly, everyone who doubted this great objective were all people who did not watch it the year before.  Even the people that did experience it couldn’t believe how big it was going to be.  The faces of the firework owners explained it all.  Box by box I purchased 16,000 bottle rockets… enough gun powder for an entire battalion of soldiers, and it was all going to explode in mere minutes.

                The night of the fourth rolled around and the word had spread.  That night I received a phone call from my mother, begging me not to go through with it.  She insisted it wasn’t safe and made sure to note every possible thing that could go wrong.  It didn’t help my cause that someone from our town lost an eye due to a bottle rocket just a few years ago which my mom hastily pointed out…  It was too late though, we had to go through with the initial plans of lighting up the sky like no small budget display ever has! 

                As eleven o’clock rolled around, my stomach sunk as I realized that it was time.  I set all 16,000 bottle rockets in a 10 square foot area.  I grabbed a jug of gasoline and poured it on the fireworks.  In preparation, we were worried that only one or two areas of the fireworks would go off, but let me be the first to say that when that flame hit the gasoline, a 25 foot tall blazing inferno instantly appeared…

                For the next ten minutes, it sounded like a musician beating away at a snare drum.  There were constant explosions, followed by faint screams of terror (from my not so brave friends).  I could only imagine what it looked like from many miles away, but up close, it was epic.  For my annual Fourth of July party, we seemed to inherit a tradition of having the cops drive by inspecting our activities.  Ironically, this was the first year in which that did not happen and perhaps the first year in which it should have happened.  It was truly more impressive than any professional fire work display I have ever seen.

                After the bottle rockets had died down, putting the flame out proved to be difficult… but not as difficult as telling my father why there was a big patch of dirt where grass used to be.  Most importantly, to my mom’s delight, we were all safe.  When asked by friends and family why I would risk poking an eye out just for a few minutes of fun, I simply responded with … “In life, there is no point to having eye sight if you never see anything memorable.”  The launching of 16,000 bottle rockets was many things, but at the very least it was memorable.

My Career Path Frustrations

I don’t want this to be a political rant… although it could be.

As of right now, my major is Secondary Ed in Speech Communication.  Recently, Governor Daugaard has proposed a 10% cut to all education funds.  Not only does this add up to more than 1,500 teaching jobs (which is a lot in South Dakota), but some schools have even proposed cutting all extracurricular activities (including debate which is a big motivation for me to enter the field of education).

Before I make any illogical decisions, I will wait to see if the cut becomes official, but if it does I don’t think I can justify getting a teaching degree, which leaves me choosing between the lesser of many evils. 

I don’t know what to do…

Plans through March

As of right now I have 2,217 VPP collected this month and 7,246 collected for the year.  My goal for this month is to retain Gold Star which means I have to step it into gear.  I moved back to cash game simply because I was making a terrible hourly at SNG’s and almost no VPP’s (only about 300 per week if I played a lot).

Next month my minimum goal is to get Platinum (7,500), but I’m really shooting for 12,000 VPP’s.  In order for me to do that, I am going to have to get my ‘I don’t have a life’ grind on.  Considering that I have Spring Break and I have more free time in my personal life, I think this might be possible.  If I can manage to get 12,000 VPP’s, it will be worth about $450 in rakeback (which is a lot of money for a broke college kid).  It also begin to set me up for a summer grind the likes of which no one has ever seen.

ILLUSlON