Life is full of 180s

Poker has been rough the last 4 days. Things have definitely cooled down. In my opinion, the recent struggle has largely been my fault. I have become complacent AND impatient with poker. After being on a heater, I have begun going into every match thinking I can play sloppily and still come out a big winner. I have begun making very unjustifiable call-downs, FPS plays, and other -EV plays. The full realization of this came to me today, and I decided to voluntarily freeze my Full Tilt account for 2 days. I could definitely use the breather.

Abruptly stressing over academics hasn't helped the situation either. Back in August, I made a blog entry that set a goal of getting a 4.0 GPA this semester. Well, I completely aborted that plan by September. My attendance rate is slightly improved this semester (still well below the student average), but I spend almost zero time doing work outside of class. Courses have become more difficult in senior year, and it's showing. Today, reality hit me: I am way behind in most of my classes. This has caused me to stress quite a lot now that I realize final exams are right around the corner. I'm trying to combat this by setting a To-Do List for each class, and prioritizing what I need to do in order to salvage my GPA for the semester.

At least Thanksgiving break is coming up. It's a well-timed break since I could use some relaxation, and a change of scenery.

Stephen grind? lolololol

Something strange has happened, and I don't like it. If anyone here can help me cure this solution, I would greatly appreciate it. The problem: I've actually had motivation to grind! I'm on pace to play over 25K hands this month. This may not sound like much to a lot of you guys... but for a HU player who is in school full time, it isn't easy. Anyway, I've actually been grinding while having good results, which is even more surprising. Usually if I'm grinding it's because I'm trying to get unstuck. This seems to hold true with many other players.

Many of those who read this blog don't actually have a Facebook (what is WRONG with you people?!)... but to those that do, I have an interesting question. I have been contemplating deleting some people who have friended me on facebook over the 4 years I've had it. There is something very unnatural about how Facebook permanentely glues you to every random acquaintence, girl you went on a date with, etc. The natural process in life is for people to slowly fall out of your life. Problem is, it's considered rude (and even malicious, to some) to unfriend someone without ample reasoning. Anyone have thoughts on this?

I am going on vacation with John/PuddlePirate and Ryan/WOWURBAD next month. I haven't traveled nearly as much as I would like to, so this should be a good start. I made a $100 cross-bet with John on getting all our passport stuff mailed out for rush order by today (Friday). The bet seemed to be very beneficial since it stopped us from procrastinating. We have not decided where we want to go yet, but I think we are leaning towards somewhere in the Caribbean or South America for a week. We want to go somewhere warm with young people and things to do. Suggestions are more than welcome, as none of us seem to be terribly knowledge on locations. There seem to be dozens of choices just within the Caribbean.

The sickness continues

This week has been an emotional rollercoaster, to say the least. I had the worst single session on Monday, losing $7K at 5/10 NL to a guy who is a mediocre reg at best. I ended up bouncing back from that two days later and having my first ever $10K day, followed by a $4.5K win the next day. You would think Im playing larger than just 2/4 - 5/10 based on the swings I've been having lately. Overall, I'm still on a ridiculous heater that I don't expect to last. My winrate over the last few months is not representative of what someone can win over the long run. That being said, I feel like I'm extremely well-adept to the games I play. One trick pony perhaps, but who cares? If some day it gets to the point that I need to become proficient at other forms of poker, I am confident I will be able to make the switch. In the mean time, I love the form of poker I specialize in. It would be difficult to make the argument that any of the time I dedicate to poker should be spent becoming a more "well-rounded" player.

Last night, my roommate Evan and I threw a house party. At University of Pittsburgh, most people live in the section of the city that the campus is located (Oakland). I moved to the section next to it so I didn't have to live in the ghetto anymore, but getting friends to visit my current place can be difficult. We managed to get 20-25 people here and the party went really well. I've come to appreciate my college years more as time goes on, and these really have been the best years of my life. I remember during adolesence that many people would seemingly exaggerate about how great college is. Well, it's been everything it was cracked up to be for me. Now I'm just afraid that life gets much more boring after graduation.

October results

Okay so if you can't tell, I ran like god in October. My work ethic was awful, yet I got rewarded. I used to tease my friend IHaveAStrong9 for having months like this, and now it would be hypocritical. In spite of the fact that this was my best month to date, it is still pretty sad how few hands I logged in. I spend too much time talking on AIM, railing high stakes games, browsing mindless forum discussion, and doing other unproductive activities. A big leak I have is mentally set a rough monetary goal for each month. Once I hit that plateau, I become unmotivated to grind.

Probably the biggest highlight of the month was one of my final matches. On October 31st, I played Huck Seed at about 11 AM eastern time. He spewed like a completely monkey and essentially handed me $3K. Once I reflected on the session, I realized it was very early on the west coast and he was likely drunk from the night before. Regardless, it still feels good to beat up on a red pro who has been on TV many times, and is even touted by his peers for supposedly being a very good heads-up player.

On a lighter note... this was the first year that I fully experienced Halloween since childhood. Halloween is incredibly fun while in college, but I didn't take advantage of it until now. I went to a couple haunted houses, rented horror movies, and spent a good bit of time brainstorming my costume (I was a rapper). My close friends had a big Halloween party on Friday. It was going really well until the Pittsburgh police broke up the party. I would say 90%+ of the people there were of legal drinking age. No one was arrested fortunately, but it was still incredibly frustrating to have a good party ruined.