So after reporting a resounding good start to the beginning of 2011, the real life doom switch has been activated. I played 7 sessions since then and only booked one winning session, a smallish win in the 8-16 game. Joy.
I hope my complaining about it will turn it around tonight.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Poker Interrupted
So, I was planning on going out to play last night. But I got interrupted by a book instead, Kitchen Confidential and didn't get off the couch. I downloaded it on my iPad over the weekend, but didn't get a chance to start reading it until my evening dinner around 8pm. I got through 75% of it or so, when before I realized it was already midnight.
My other hobby, other than poker, is cooking. I like to cook and try new techniques, ingredients, and other dishes. With our kitchen remodel done, and my new kitchen gadgets including a stand mixer, new blender, and other goodies I have been doing a lot of cooking these days, specifically baking.
Also, as a teenager in high school I actually worked as a line cook for a national restaurant chain, and a lot of what Anthony Bourdain describes in his book brought back a lot of memories of that job. Sometimes I wonder, if my true calling was be to an executive chef at some high-end restaurant. But then I remember that as soon as your hobby turns into a job, it's rarely as fun as you think it would be.
My other hobby, other than poker, is cooking. I like to cook and try new techniques, ingredients, and other dishes. With our kitchen remodel done, and my new kitchen gadgets including a stand mixer, new blender, and other goodies I have been doing a lot of cooking these days, specifically baking.
Also, as a teenager in high school I actually worked as a line cook for a national restaurant chain, and a lot of what Anthony Bourdain describes in his book brought back a lot of memories of that job. Sometimes I wonder, if my true calling was be to an executive chef at some high-end restaurant. But then I remember that as soon as your hobby turns into a job, it's rarely as fun as you think it would be.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Poker in the New Year
I have resolved to make 2011 my best year ever in terms of always playing my A game. Here's what I resolve to do:
a) Don't drink and play
b) Pick up when the game gets short and it's no longer good
c) Stop mindlessly triple-barreling
d) Stop putting people on hands that I can beat, just so I can call
e) Value-bet relentlessly
f) bet-fold more and raise-fold as opposed to bet/call and raise/call
g) Give players, particularly the fish, respect for the hand that they are representing. Yes, sometimes no matter how ludicrous the pre-flop and flop play is, they actually did flop a full house on a 9 2 2 board when they capped preflop with 92s.
h) Limit my sessions to no more than 8 hours in a day
So far I have been doing good on all of these, and I hope to keep it up throughout the year. For once, I finally have plans for the money I make while playing poker. For quite a while, and I still do, play poker just as a hobby, I never really bought or did anything with the money that I won. But now I am saving up for something.
So far in three 20/40 sessions since 2011, I have done extremely well and am up 4k in 9 hours of play. I haven't run particularly hot or cold either, just about normal so that makes me feel pretty good about the results so far.
a) Don't drink and play
b) Pick up when the game gets short and it's no longer good
c) Stop mindlessly triple-barreling
d) Stop putting people on hands that I can beat, just so I can call
e) Value-bet relentlessly
f) bet-fold more and raise-fold as opposed to bet/call and raise/call
g) Give players, particularly the fish, respect for the hand that they are representing. Yes, sometimes no matter how ludicrous the pre-flop and flop play is, they actually did flop a full house on a 9 2 2 board when they capped preflop with 92s.
h) Limit my sessions to no more than 8 hours in a day
So far I have been doing good on all of these, and I hope to keep it up throughout the year. For once, I finally have plans for the money I make while playing poker. For quite a while, and I still do, play poker just as a hobby, I never really bought or did anything with the money that I won. But now I am saving up for something.
So far in three 20/40 sessions since 2011, I have done extremely well and am up 4k in 9 hours of play. I haven't run particularly hot or cold either, just about normal so that makes me feel pretty good about the results so far.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Vegas Recap
So my buddy and I headed out to Vegas on Sunday, leaving San Diego around 9:45pm. We arrived in Las Vegas a little after 2am. Checked into our hotel at the Aria, and hit the tables. I pretty much played craps and a little blackjack this trip. My buddy who I play poker with at Oceans-11 pretty regularly, is a blackjack player and a heavy sports bettor.
My first craps session, I lost a little over $500, and then I made a quick stop at the blackjack tables, played one shuffle in a double deck game, and made $500. Then it was off to the petting zoo.
Fast forward 4 hours later, my friend and I make the walk of shame, coming out of the club into bright morning daylight. We cab it back to Aria and he crashes in the hotel room, while I play a quick craps session and lose 1k very quickly. I head back up to the room to "crash". Now I can never sleep in strange beds very well, no matter how tired I am. This hotel was no different. After getting into bed a little after 9am, I was up at noon.
My buddy was still sawing logs, so I showered quickly and left the room for him to sleep. I hit the craps table, and finally went on a nice run and won 1k. My buddy finally is stirring and we hoof it over to Planet Hollywood, because he wants to bet the ATL-NO game and the line at the Aria is ATL - 3, and he wants to get a better a number. At Planet Hollywood he gets the game at ATL - 2.5.
At this point we are both starving and I am dead tired. We head back to the hotel room and order room service. It takes them forever to deliver our food. It wasn't bad, I just got a club sandwich and some french onion soup.
I then crash hard. I wake up in time to catch the last 11 minutes of the MNF, and get to see NO come back and win the game. I head back down to the casino, put in a craps session and finally go on a long heater and win 3k. We head out to Mastros for dinner in Crystals.
Our appetizers were good, we got a selection of oysters (which I don't eat), mussels, and tuna tartare. The mussels were good, the tartare - eh, I didn't like the mayonnaise based sauce they used. Then the waiter screwed up our entrees. I order 12 oz filet, medium-rare, no butter, no parsley, with a pepper corn sauce, and sauteed asparagus. My buddy order some fish, no oil, and a twice baked potato.
What shows up? A 12 oz bone-in filet, with butter and parsley, sauteed spinach, fish with oil. The only thing right, the twice baked potato. We send everything back, and 15 minutes later our correct order shows up, but they gave us the same potato. They must have just put it under the warmer, and sent it right back out to us. Horrible. When we got our check, we made sure they took it off the bill, even though everything was going to be comped anyways. Just the principle of things.
After dinner, we play some blackjack, I win $700, and then head out to the petting zoo again. In the taxi line, we get a rookie driver, who we find out later that this is his first night on the job, that won't take us there for free. For those who don't know, at most places if you arrive by cab, there's a twenty dollar cover per person, that gets kicked back to the driver. Every cabbie in the city, will normally take you for free since the kickback covers the fare plus some. The idiot driver must not have known how it works, since he refused to take us there for free, so we got out of his cab, and got into the cab behind him. He knew how to play the game and we got a free ride to the club.
Many hours later, we our doing our second walk of shame. We crash, and this time my buddy snores like a frickin' wildebeest, and I get like two hours of sleep before I can't stand it anymore and take off. I play some craps, get some lunch at Julian Serrano's. Lunch was not bad, I got the Spanish tortilla and the seared Ahi salad. The tortilla was a little salty, and the Ahi salad had way too many Spanish olives.
I also decide to get a massage at the Aria spa. Not bad, very relaxing, but my massage therapist was ahem can we say plus sized?
After the massage, I am very relaxed, but for some reason can't sleep. So I end up playing craps and losing 4k after like 3.5 hours of playing. Plus I loan my buddy 4k for some sports betting. I then end up crashing in the room around 9pm. I wake up the next morning around 6am to find out that my buddy has self-destructed in a big way. So with both of us cash poor, we get the hell out of dodge and are on the road before 7am. We hit bad rainy weather and the drive takes us almost 5 hours to get home. That's it, I haven't been to Vegas in over like 2 years or so. It was fun, but I think next time I need to take it a little easier, I am not a young man anymore, and my body can't handle 24+ hour benders anymore.
My first craps session, I lost a little over $500, and then I made a quick stop at the blackjack tables, played one shuffle in a double deck game, and made $500. Then it was off to the petting zoo.
Fast forward 4 hours later, my friend and I make the walk of shame, coming out of the club into bright morning daylight. We cab it back to Aria and he crashes in the hotel room, while I play a quick craps session and lose 1k very quickly. I head back up to the room to "crash". Now I can never sleep in strange beds very well, no matter how tired I am. This hotel was no different. After getting into bed a little after 9am, I was up at noon.
My buddy was still sawing logs, so I showered quickly and left the room for him to sleep. I hit the craps table, and finally went on a nice run and won 1k. My buddy finally is stirring and we hoof it over to Planet Hollywood, because he wants to bet the ATL-NO game and the line at the Aria is ATL - 3, and he wants to get a better a number. At Planet Hollywood he gets the game at ATL - 2.5.
At this point we are both starving and I am dead tired. We head back to the hotel room and order room service. It takes them forever to deliver our food. It wasn't bad, I just got a club sandwich and some french onion soup.
I then crash hard. I wake up in time to catch the last 11 minutes of the MNF, and get to see NO come back and win the game. I head back down to the casino, put in a craps session and finally go on a long heater and win 3k. We head out to Mastros for dinner in Crystals.
Our appetizers were good, we got a selection of oysters (which I don't eat), mussels, and tuna tartare. The mussels were good, the tartare - eh, I didn't like the mayonnaise based sauce they used. Then the waiter screwed up our entrees. I order 12 oz filet, medium-rare, no butter, no parsley, with a pepper corn sauce, and sauteed asparagus. My buddy order some fish, no oil, and a twice baked potato.
What shows up? A 12 oz bone-in filet, with butter and parsley, sauteed spinach, fish with oil. The only thing right, the twice baked potato. We send everything back, and 15 minutes later our correct order shows up, but they gave us the same potato. They must have just put it under the warmer, and sent it right back out to us. Horrible. When we got our check, we made sure they took it off the bill, even though everything was going to be comped anyways. Just the principle of things.
After dinner, we play some blackjack, I win $700, and then head out to the petting zoo again. In the taxi line, we get a rookie driver, who we find out later that this is his first night on the job, that won't take us there for free. For those who don't know, at most places if you arrive by cab, there's a twenty dollar cover per person, that gets kicked back to the driver. Every cabbie in the city, will normally take you for free since the kickback covers the fare plus some. The idiot driver must not have known how it works, since he refused to take us there for free, so we got out of his cab, and got into the cab behind him. He knew how to play the game and we got a free ride to the club.
Many hours later, we our doing our second walk of shame. We crash, and this time my buddy snores like a frickin' wildebeest, and I get like two hours of sleep before I can't stand it anymore and take off. I play some craps, get some lunch at Julian Serrano's. Lunch was not bad, I got the Spanish tortilla and the seared Ahi salad. The tortilla was a little salty, and the Ahi salad had way too many Spanish olives.
I also decide to get a massage at the Aria spa. Not bad, very relaxing, but my massage therapist was ahem can we say plus sized?
After the massage, I am very relaxed, but for some reason can't sleep. So I end up playing craps and losing 4k after like 3.5 hours of playing. Plus I loan my buddy 4k for some sports betting. I then end up crashing in the room around 9pm. I wake up the next morning around 6am to find out that my buddy has self-destructed in a big way. So with both of us cash poor, we get the hell out of dodge and are on the road before 7am. We hit bad rainy weather and the drive takes us almost 5 hours to get home. That's it, I haven't been to Vegas in over like 2 years or so. It was fun, but I think next time I need to take it a little easier, I am not a young man anymore, and my body can't handle 24+ hour benders anymore.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Off to Vegas?
Maybe, it's a huge SNAFU, it seems like to get anything organized with gamboolers, who live by the moment with no penchant for advanced planning of any kind. Hopefully I will be on the road within the hour. Thanks to my mother-in-law for visiting and my understanding wife for giving me a 72 hour junket.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Happy Holidays
It's that time of the year again. Things have slowed down at work fortunately this year. Looks like we are going to be able to sample our part to customers without any issue meeting our targeted December 2010 commercial sample release date. We have two tape outs early next year, which means things will be getting interesting/busy early next year.
I got a promotion at work to being officially a manager, even though I have been doing technical management and project management for a quite a while now. But now I have people officially reporting to me, and I get to see/write their reviews, see how much they make, etc, etc. Weird stuff.
On the work front, I also had one of my guys working on my project resign because he was not performing up to par, was on a performance improvement plan, and wasn't meeting expectations and was on the road to involuntary termination. I have certainly had better days in my life, and I question whether or not there was more I could do as leader/mentor/coach to help him. But I suppose there's only so much I can do, before it really becomes his responsibility. But still, it is tough, particularly with the holidays and the job market so tough. In some ways I feel like I failed, and failure is always tough to swallow.
Picked my mother-in-law and nephew up from the airport today. They will be staying with us until New Years Eve. My kids and my nephew get along great and they play really well, and my wife loves it since they are so preoccupied with each other, she doesn't really have to do anything, except make sure that they are not doing anything to kill themselves.
I got out and played last night. I never got an opportunity to play the 20/40. I haven't played on Tuesday evenings for a while and I forgot that Tuesdays are Alan nights at Oceans. The board was deep and nobody was moving. The 20 game was one of the better games I have seen in a long time. Instead I played 8/16 and ran like god, and won 4.5 racks in 4 hours. Plus I got an extra $40 for offering to roll my name on the 20/40 list so that the next name on the list, who happened to be sitting to my right, could take the game sooner. This transaction took place around 10pm, and since I knew that the list wasn't going to move, and I was planning on leaving at around midnight, it was a good move on my part. I collected the $40, and at around 11:45pm, his name got called. The must move 8-16 which we were playing short broke a little after midnight and I went home.
Sooooo, I thought I was going to get to bed fairly early around 1am, but NO, my kids had to go and download Angry Birds on to my iPad. I got home and started playing it for a little bit, just to relax a bit, but silly me I get hooked on the game and play until 3am. Go figure, guess I should have taken the 20 game anyways. Would have gotten to bed at the same time.
I got a promotion at work to being officially a manager, even though I have been doing technical management and project management for a quite a while now. But now I have people officially reporting to me, and I get to see/write their reviews, see how much they make, etc, etc. Weird stuff.
On the work front, I also had one of my guys working on my project resign because he was not performing up to par, was on a performance improvement plan, and wasn't meeting expectations and was on the road to involuntary termination. I have certainly had better days in my life, and I question whether or not there was more I could do as leader/mentor/coach to help him. But I suppose there's only so much I can do, before it really becomes his responsibility. But still, it is tough, particularly with the holidays and the job market so tough. In some ways I feel like I failed, and failure is always tough to swallow.
Picked my mother-in-law and nephew up from the airport today. They will be staying with us until New Years Eve. My kids and my nephew get along great and they play really well, and my wife loves it since they are so preoccupied with each other, she doesn't really have to do anything, except make sure that they are not doing anything to kill themselves.
I got out and played last night. I never got an opportunity to play the 20/40. I haven't played on Tuesday evenings for a while and I forgot that Tuesdays are Alan nights at Oceans. The board was deep and nobody was moving. The 20 game was one of the better games I have seen in a long time. Instead I played 8/16 and ran like god, and won 4.5 racks in 4 hours. Plus I got an extra $40 for offering to roll my name on the 20/40 list so that the next name on the list, who happened to be sitting to my right, could take the game sooner. This transaction took place around 10pm, and since I knew that the list wasn't going to move, and I was planning on leaving at around midnight, it was a good move on my part. I collected the $40, and at around 11:45pm, his name got called. The must move 8-16 which we were playing short broke a little after midnight and I went home.
Sooooo, I thought I was going to get to bed fairly early around 1am, but NO, my kids had to go and download Angry Birds on to my iPad. I got home and started playing it for a little bit, just to relax a bit, but silly me I get hooked on the game and play until 3am. Go figure, guess I should have taken the 20 game anyways. Would have gotten to bed at the same time.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Double down
Not much in the way of poker to report. I have been very busy at work the last couple of weeks. I wanted to play last night but when I called the casino around 8 pm there was a bad short-handed 40 and no 20 game going. So instead a buddy of mine and I want to Pala casino instead and ate at the buffet and played blackjack. I won 600 bucks.
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