to clear up any confusion

since Kush couldn't find it:

my new blog is now at tworags.com.

the link straight to my blog is here.

my blog, it is on the moving

my blog will now be hosted at www.tworags.com. i'm very excited for this change in scenery and plan to be writing more often as a result. i could get into the hows and whys of why and how this happened, but i'd rather just get back to writing.

lack of updates

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I took some time off from poker while I was road tripping in Texas, so I haven't played much at all. (I did play the Sundays while I was there, and made two deep runs in the Stars Million, but no dice-- still waiting for that big score.)

Anyway, I have another project coming up, that should be really cool when it all works out. I don't want to say too much about it right now, but I'll let you know what it is when it comes to fruition.

This is all to say, I may not be writing much while I sort it out.

coming out of a slump

Quick entry. I won the Stars 100k tonight for close to $28,000. Not much to say; I played mostly well and tighter than usual save for a few screwups in the early going. Enough went my way to take it down. This is a big slump-breaker, too. Here's hoping this gives me some momentum to build on.

the downswing continues

Another awful session puts my downswing at somewhere around $45,000 in two weeks.

I'm taking a serious break from poker. I just can't handle how badly I'm running and the massive amounts of money I'm going through.

Update from the West Coast, including my huge downswing

OK. So I ended up busting out pretty early on Day 2 of the LAPC. It was an embarrassing day for me. First, I overslept a tournament that started at 3:30. I made it in half an hour late, having lost about 3,000 chips. My table was tough, so naturally I responded by playing weakly. I was card-dead, and the one chance I tried to open to steal the blinds, I raised 20% of my stack and folded to a push.

So after this awful performance, I decided to take some time off and just chill out in the hotel. Played some online. I hit a bad stretch, and probably didn't play my best, either; I ended up down about $10,000 in this time.

After a couple of days my friend Steve talked me into coming to Vegas. My astonishing laziness meant I hadn't left the hotel in two days, and I took another day to leave, because my schedule had again become nocturnal, and I was preferring the lifestyle of sleeping in and lying around the hotel watching TV and playing online. But on March 1 I finally booked a flight and left. So after spending a week in LA, not only did I see nothing in the city, I didn't even play cash games at the Commerce. I'm really, really terrible at letting my laziness attach me to my bad habits, and the curse of the Internet just makes it worse.

Anyway, upon arrival we realized we had enough time to make it to the Venetian and play that day's event (they're having the Deep Stack Extravaganza right now; a series of $300 and $500 events with, well, deep stacks). Steve and I played but I busted shortly after the 100/200/25 level began, and he didn't take much longer.

(As a side note, I feel like I've been playing poorly in tournaments recently. I'm not being aggressive enough, because I fear that with my name and reputation, people will realize I'm full of shit when I bet so often, so I shy away from betting even when I should. On top of that, I still think I should play the hands, so I just play them passively. This leads to more difficult decisions and more getting outdrawn. In spots where raising or folding are clearly the best decisions, I call-- which is the worst choice of the three, but my attempt to compromise. It doesn't work. I am reminded of this because of my bustout hand here, where I flopped bottom two because I overlimped the button with 75o instead of raising to knock out the blinds and isolate the limper. If I raise, I win the pot; instead, I flopped bottom two pair, shoved over the short stack's push from the BB, and busted when the SB called with top two.)

I played some 5/10 NL while I waited for Steve to finish. In this time I got QQ vs. KK fourhanded and managed to drop $1000 with it. Yippee.

We left and decided to get dinner at Firefly, a popular Spanish tapas place not far from his apartment. The food was excellent although we ordered much too much of it. The Mojitos were also delicious (and of course I had several).

Anyway: I wrote more here but Blogger and Firefox combined to lose it. Great fucking pieces of software they are. I'm not rewriting this shit since it's all boring anyway. Cliff notes, I'm running like shit and ready to go home. I'm not playing online again until I leave Vegas. I will probably fail to satellite into the Wynn main event or cash in the Venetian events. I've lost somewhere between $30,000 and $35,000 since I came west. Poker sucks and the one time I try to write about it my shitty browser and shitty blogging software conspire to lose what I've written. Fuck this shit.

Made it through day 1 of LAPC

More to tell later but the story is I have 21,225. I have had an up and down day-- played well and got lucky when I had to but played poorly in a couple of big pots that hurt my position.

I am mounting a comeback, though, seeing as how I was down to 825 chips in the small blind at 200/400/50. I'll tell about that later, too.

For now I'm just going to bed though.

I can't believe I forgot to write in the last six weeks

I'm currently in Los Angeles, hoping to play in the LA Poker Classic tomorrow. I say "hoping" because I haven't won my seat yet and my failure to bring a second form of ID has made obtaining cash exceedingly difficult. I'm going to have to make a run to a bank tomorrow or find someone here who can help me.

Since Australia nothing particularly noteworthy has happened; I've had a few decent cashes but no kind of major breakthrough. I've started to expand my game roster, because I'm getting a little bored with $100 online NLH tournaments. So I'm getting back into cash games, trying to develop a consistent winning strategy (very different from my "see every flop" live deep-stacked strategy... 100BB aggressive 6-max games don't work like that).

I'm also playing more limit hold 'em. I like the aggressive nature of shorthanded high-limit games, though I'm terrible at saving bets. I'm pretty sure I'm a winner at 30/60, though, at least so far.

I'm going to head back to Syracuse after the tournament, to rest and relax. I've been on the road too much lately, and a lot of that time has been spent drinking and partying with old friends of mine down south. I intend to really rest and get better, so I'll be in top shape for my next goal: Foxwoods.