21st birthday - reflecting, instead of bar hopping

Well, it's my 21st birthday and I've decided that now is a good time to reflect on my life. I don't talk about my life outside of poker enough on here, so this will be a nice start.

For those who don't know, I'm in my junior year of college. I live a pretty typical college lifestyle, with 5 roommates who share one bathroom in our house. While I am moving out into a nicer apartment this fall, I will never forget how fun it was to live here. My roommates are all awesome friends, and junior year has shaped up to be the best time I've had at college. Even if I never use that piece of paper I'll receive at graduation, I'm extremely happy that I went to school here at University of Pittsburgh.

As for poker - It is awesome that I'm making money doing something I love. Poker fits really well into my personality - I'm a really competitive person who was never athletic, so sports never helped satisfy that part of me. I also love how poker is mental warfare, and constantly challenging my logical reasoning skills. Poker is also a very pure game, in spite of the swings. Poker doesn't judge you. The best players win the money in the end, regardless of overrated aspects such as reputation and tenure in the profession. Those who work the hardest and have the truly best skills inevitably have better results. (In cash games, at least...haha.)

I'm pretty much fully transitioned into adulthood now. It is a bit scary, but now my slate is for myself to write. It is awesome to know that I can paint a life for myself as however I see fit. I have so much stuff to look forward to. As far as the foreseeable future goes, spending Vegas with poker players who I feel a strong bond with should be awesome. I then get to finish off school with a bang, and figure out where the hell to move to after that. I also get to evaluate whether poker is something I'm going to stick with right out of school.

I'll finish off the entry with a few pictures of my life..

Speeding up hair loss

I can't put into words how frustrating this month is, so I'll just show the graph to explain:



Random thoughts:

-I have had several days where I am up 4-5+ BI at one point, and then blow all or most of it by the conclusion of that same day.
-Whenever a fish sits HU and wins a big pot early, they always hit-and-run this month. Every single time.
-I literally tried ripping my hair out 5 minutes ago.
-I feel like I'm playing well, but it's hard to keep having confidence in that belief when the results have been this way.
-I can't even claim that my PokerEV graph proves I'm running shitty. I'm running at about EV for all-in pots on Full Tilt this month.
-I find myself getting more emotional about poker now than in the recent past. This even started last month, when I was winning. I have thrown water bottles at the wall after losing a tough pot, screamed expletives, and other things that should be completely uncharacteristic of a professional player.

Worst session ever; really frustrating month

I just logged my single worst session ever, losing 7 buy-ins on Absolute 6 max. It was a typical catastrophic session: starting with coolers and other things out of my control, then evolving to me playing my D-game toward the end of the session.



I believe these all to be complete coolers (or hands that I played fine but got fucked), but would like input from anyone if you agree or disagree on any of them:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124951
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124958
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124980
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124984
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124985

The end of the session got really ugly. One hand, I c-bet $422 into a $28 pot (meant to bet $22) with air and got shoved on. In another hand, I raised OOP w/ KK, then check-called 3 streets on an A high board (got shown two pair). I was just careless and really aggravated toward the end of the session. I wouldn't say I was on monkey tilt, but all the stars aligned for my sub-pair game to really hurt my session results.

I want to start grinding like crazy for the rest of the month, but now my results for the month (I'm +$200 through a measly 9K hands) are making me wonder if I'm doing something wrong and it's getting to my head. The last thing I want is to have a disaster month where I'm blowing away buy-in after buy-in playing tilted poker.

Dolla dolla bill, ya'll

I did some math and realized that I am going to be spending a TON of money over the next 6 months. I have my Vegas trip, I want to get furniture and a HDTV for my new apartment, Playstation 3, I want a new car (that I am going to force myself to put $5K down on), AND I have to pay taxes.

While this won't do much, I have decided that I am going to try to spend as little as possible in March or April. It'll be a sort of competition against myself to see how much I can penny pinch. My roommates at college are the masters of budgeting when they have to be, so I figure I can just follow what they do. I have about $325/month in fixed costs, but other than that I think I can keep the number very low. The one thing I won't settle on is getting the cheap toilet paper that feels like notebook paper.

Screw you, school

Unfortunately, I have two papers due on Monday, as well as a difficult exam next week. It appears that academics are going to get the most attention in my life for the time-being. This means I'm going to go very light on poker for the next week or so. This is frustrating because I set lofty goals for poker lately. I am going to make sure I get 25K quality hands in this month.

A recommendation to anyone who enjoys watching good TV poker: You need to watch the television shows "PartyPoker.com Scandinavian Poker Masters: The Game" and "Million Dollar Cash Game". Both shows were recorded in Europe last fall, and both have been great to watch for serious poker players. The Scandinavian show is a 6 handed cash game that has lots of intelligent, aggressive players. It plays just like an internet cash game, and actually makes for great television. You should be able to find both shows on Pokertube, as well as various torrents.

TEAM POKER GOGOGOGOGO

I would just like to say that collectively, the 6 people who will be living in our Vegas house this summer made $120,000 in January alone. This includes me, and the 5 people whose blogs are listed on the bottom right column of my blog.

That is pretty sick for a bunch of online grinders who don't really take big shots.