I Suck

Ok, so I am really sucking at this blogging thing. I meant to get to it, but life has a way of deciding where your time goes. The bands are taking up time, work is taking up time, and there looks to be some big changes coming in that regard. But family life really has me dealing with some stuff right now.

My oldest son, who will turn 18 in a month and a half, has me concerned. Lets just say that having been in the music scene for most of my life has exposed me to certain things. I have been smart enough to stay away from most of it, however; I do occasionally partake in the smoking of the green. I have tried to keep this part of my life completely separate from my family life. Well, eventually that becomes impossible. My soon to be 18 year old seems to try to emulate me. He plays in a band, and generally picks up habits of mine. Very scary! I try to let him know all the mistakes I have made and try to steer him away from them. I let him know all I have an interest in is making sure he is on the path to have a great life.

Thurday night of last week I get home from work. (I work second shift which is really bad for the family life) It has been a bit of a stressful day, I go into my sock drawer where I just happen to have a bit of the earlier mentioned green. I pick it up and notice that it seems considerably lighter than it should! This cant be I think to myself. No way either of my sons would
A) Go into my room
B) Snoop through my stuff
C) Have the gall to actually take some of the earlier mentioned green!

Well you can guess what happened. It was my soon to be 18 year old. How do I handle this without sounding like a hypocrite? Well, I called a family meeting. I decided to come clean to both my sons about some of my bad habits and why they are considered bad habits that they shouldn't follow. It was not an easy conversation, but I think I got my point across as to why the earlier mentioned green is not something that I approve of them doing. I went through the whole gateway drug conversation. I relayed personal stories of friends I knew that went down the wrong path. I think it went well. As for the soon to be 18 year old, well he is punished, not so much for the smoking, but for the going through my belongings and taking something from me. I let him know that a family has to trust one another, and that type of behavior is just something that I wont tolerate. I hope I handled this right. My 16 year claimed to have no idea that I smoked occasionally. Again, I hope I did not make a mistake here.

There is more going on at home than just this. My former fiance, who still lives with us, has not been happy lately. When she is not happy, she makes sure I am not happy. This will end in February when her volunteer job ends. That is when she will move out. Don't get me wrong, we still deeply care about one another, and hope for the best for each others lives. But until February we are kind of stuck in a holding pattern, which means we still act like we are together. It is strange situation, and of course we still argue like we are still together.

As for poker, I have learned that when the family life is not going well, then I shouldn't play. When I am angry about certain aspect of family life, I tend to play on tilt. I get hyper aggressive and do not tolerate someone reraising me. Very stupid and a good way to blow through the bank roll. This is unfortunate because I felt I was playing the best poker I have ever played until things at home started to unravel a bit. I am hoping to recoup the losses from the past week now that things are settling down a bit again. And of course I am hoping to get this blogger thing down and become much more reliable with updates.

Its Wednesday, Must Be Blog Time

Ok, this will be updated more than just once a week, just getting flooded with work and issues to deal with at home. Anyway, played a typical tourney for me last night. I was up, I was down, I was up again huge, and then went out in 4th. I tend to get too caught up in the allure of the having the big stack and constantly pushing. So you may be thinking that is what you are supposed to do, right? Well yes, however; you still need to know when to back off, and that is the area I need to work on.

Here is something I want to write about. In just about every damn poker book you read they mention that you need to practice working on putting you opponent on a hand, but they never give you any excercises in the books to help you with this. So, I will. Each day I will post a hand I played to showdown. I will post observations of a particular opponent, their stack and then list the betting for each round. The next day I will post what that person held. I feel this is the one area of poker that no one has done a good job of writing about, and it is one ofthe most important areas to master. Maybe I have found my blog niche? We shall see. Get ready for the first problem tomorrow.

So I Am A Slacker

Jeez, I cant believe it has been close to a week since I updated this blog. I am in the process of getting a new band together and I am slacking on that as well. I need to get back to everyone and finally set up some audition dates. So with that, work, my other band and of course poker I haven't been quite as vigilant with this blog as I intend be. On to poker.

I am thinking of signing up to Pokerstars because I hear good things about their tournament structure. I really dislike the structure of most online tourneys. Most start with either too small a starting stack compared to the blinds, or have the blinds raise too quickly. I prefer to find a structure that lets you play your game without having to worry about the blinds catching up to you to quickly. My question to you is: What site has your favotite structure, and why? Help me find the oasis of tourney poker online.

As for the use of the word "too". I have no idea if I was using it correctly. Grammar has never been my strong suit, so if you seeing any mistakes, let me know, because just like my journey into poker, I am always learning.

No Soup For You!

Grinding away at the SnG's right now. That seems to be where I am most profitable. I have a few theories on that. I will post them sometime soon, just hashing them out a bit.
The music seems to be working. I have definilty noticed that I am more focused when playing. Time to invest in some more cd's. The one I am using now only has four songs on it, so needless to say that it is getting a bit repetitive. This is also a topic I will expand upon soon.

So PokerStars says I havent had my blog long enough to participate in the tourney. Bastards! Just kidding, I understand the reasoning, but damn, I was looking forward to that tourney. Next year I guess.

An Unremarkable Tournament

So I finished 79th out of 189 last night at a 10&1 MTT. I didnt lose on a bad beat, I didnt lose because of a really bad play made and I didnt make any amazing plays that I just had to write about.
So you may be wondering what this post is about then. Well, I will tell you. This was the most monotonous, unspectacular tourney I have ever played. Nothing interesting happened, I was getting cold decked all night. I had one good hand of pocket queens, I raised three time the BB and everyone folded. That was basically the highlight of the night for me. I didnt win or lose any big pots, just had me stack slowly erode away. I made a desperate all in when I was down to 800 with the the blinds at 150 and 75. I had Kd,10s and got called by someone holding an Ace. Nothing came down to improve my hand and I was done. I wasnt angry, I wasnt upset, just kind of ho hum about it all. I wasnt getting cards all night, and didnt expect to get any help on this showdown.
Now I know we all have nights where we get cold decked, so why was this different? Well most of the time that this happens to me I am still able to make moves when I have postition and no one is coming strong. Never had a chance to do that last night. Not really complaining, just an observation on how sometimes you dont seem to get a chance to do anything at the table.
Is there a way to combat this? It makes me wonder which school of thought is correct when it comes to the beginning of tourneys? Are you better off playing very consertative at first because your chips are more vaulable at the beginning of the tourney? At least that what Sklansky says. Or, are you better off trying to accumulate chips like a mad man at the beginning to try and give yourself some cushion for the fast escalating blinds?

Books

Its amazing to me how many professionals claim never to have read any poker books. You would think that to become very good at something you would devore every possible piece of information you can find. Now the question becomes, is there an advantage to not having read any these books? Well, lets think about this. Poker is a game of deception, if you and I have read the same strategy books, well we probably have the same idea then about how hands are supposed to be played. Now what if someone had never study any material at all? They have through trial and error developed their own strategies that seem to work for them even if they contradict what some of experts tell us we must do. That player now becomes an X factor, we have no idea what he is playing and how he is playing it. Isnt this now the hardest person at the table to play against?

I dont have an answer as to what the better approach is, because by reading all the books it will save you money upfront instead of having to learn those same lessons at the poker table which could become very expensive. However; in the long run, could the self taught be more +EV than the book learned?