I know, I know, I've been pretty much out of it for the last 3 months... Basically, since the end of January, poker has slowly slept away from my consciousness and my preoccupations... The reason? Really really simple... Have been single for over 2 years and in early Februruary, I met a woman, and well, that has taken a lot of my "time-dedicated-to-hobbies-and-such"... Have even been neglecting my best buddies... But, hey, they've been quite understanding and supportive to say the least :D...

Still, poker's kinda itching its way back into my mind these days, especially with our annual WSOP Prop Bet, featuring new blood this year :D! Indeed, Nic's buddy Djoph decided to get in on our action :P... So here's a breakdown of our picks, 3 each this year, for a whooping tenner :).

Djoph:
Tom Durrr Dwan
Chris Jesus Ferguson
Scotty Nguyen

Nic:
Barry Bear Greenstein
Phil Ivey
Eric E-Dog Lindgren

Alex:
Phil 'STFU' Hellmuth
Daniel KidPoker Negreanu
Erik Seidel

I must say Nic's team seem pretty solid... We'll see... Gonna be fun!!!

Took the month off. Wrote a script :|. A complete script, no less (well, alright, it does need a re-write, but is HAS an ending :P). While fiddling around with, like, half a dozen other ideas... There once was a time not so long ago where I was deeply convinced I'd never ever do that ever again... So when I got some rhythm and all, I would be coming home after work, or waking up in the morning, and feeling kinda... obsessed... no, not that, 'obsessed' is not the right word... Occupied by my story... and the fact that every night or morning I spent screwing around with it made it all closer to being complete (not finished mind you, complete; ie, having all parts of the typical, overused 3 acts), I never really felt like playing cards... Except in pubs, with a couple pints down :P...

Anyway, I finally got back in the saddle, depositing on CD Poker to clear the bonus listed on Bonus Whores. Haven't yet played a thousand hands and I already cleared about 10$ of that 200$ bonus, alternating between NL20 and NL50... This bonus is just too easy to clear... And I have 3 months?!?!? Hell, I could probably take another month off and still pull this one ;-). CD's client is H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E though. I mean, who can really say they like this carpet, seriously?!?!?

Been playing less and reading more, so that one I have to post :P...

Deadpool, The Merc With A Mouth, my new favorite super-dude, is the suicide king!!!! lol


And, well if you've ever read any of his comics, you know he's indeed the suicide king ;-). Well close to it anyways :P...

Ok. I've postponed that one long enough now. And, any way I put it, I've painted myself in a corner here; it's January 31st, and I haven't wrote down any 2009 objectives, so it's now or never basically cause, well, call me stupid, but I can't really set myself to writing yearly objectives in February... The year would be just too advanced for my tastes... Lol.

I'll try to be brief, mostly because it should help keeping my objectives brief, thus, projecting the illusion that I've, at least, learned a little from last year ;-).

Considering we're at the end of January, it is quite obvious I had time to ponder and brood over what could be realistic, simple yet challenging objectives for 2009. So here we go:

• Play at least 150k hands of online cash game poker
• Define what the fsck poker is, and can be in my life

That's it?!?!?
That's it.

150k
Self-explanatory. Might be harder than I think though. Or easier. We'll see, lol.

Defining Poker in My Life
Well, that one might get a little trickier, and deserves a quick explanation, imo.

I have been playing poker as a "hobby-and-maybe-more" for about 2 years, very irregularly and very emotionally, while entertaining some rather ambitious goals, hopes and dreams. All in all, giving me a bunch of highs, coupled with a bunch of lows, and that tends to factor in a lot in my general mood outside of poker, which I cannot say I care very much for. Every high brings its load of confidence boost and renewed beliefs, while ever next low brings its obvious load of self-doubt and deception and anger. Which, in short, questions the worth of the whole thing, really. So, I guess I'd like to answer that question as definitely as possible, hopefully, sooner rather than later, mainly because this one seems pretty fundamental to me. Hehe :-).

Ok. After much much kicking and screaming, and then some more, I think I managed to take some kind of relative distance, while keeping dabbing at the game. And, god how silly it sounds now I'm writing it, but I think the most important lesson in my latest bad streak (I could venture saying it might be the case for all cold streaks, but I feel rather humble by the game, and life these days ;-)) is: poker is not a fscking lottery. While it is silly, I believe it deserves some quick explanation. The thing is, and I'm sure I've come to this exact same realization before (god, I am dumb...), I tend to tarp myself whenever I'm closing in on a proper bankroll for a next stake. And then (I'm grossly hypothesizing here), two major kinda unconscious behviors and patterns take just enough control of my game to screw it all to pieces... These 2 patterns/behaviors would be, in no particular order, *drumrolls*: 1) I feel I've beaten a level, and thus, chest pumped, I figure I can outplay anyone. 2) I fall into the impatient-yet-complacent tarp and spew with no regards to opponents, board textures, stacks, stats, action, forgetting along the way some basic facts of Holdem, like, oh I dunno, from the top of my head, hands can improve AND weaken. You know, stuff like your Rockets are just one overpair on a KhJhQhTcTs board, and if super-nit villain suddenly wakes up on the river, you will not correct your commitment mistake by shove-calling. And overplaying monster starting hands late in a hand is, for me anyway, falling into the lottery tarp; I feel I just won the lottery when waking up with rockets, so they cannot be beaten right? I mean, I've just won the lottery, didn't I? Poker is not a fscking lottery, dumb fsck, really :P.

The good news is, besides that very retarded "duh! I get it", with my dabbings/grindings, plus the slowish motherfscking bonus whoring ever, plus a fat-fat VIP rakeback check, I am almost back where I was before the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan. And, best of all (although part of me goes "I'm shaking in my boots"... Ironically, and that might be a sign of my ego, the voice is Ghostface's from Scream. Not too sure how I feel about that one, actually. LOL!), I can now take another shot at NL50. Thank you bonus whoring!!!! But then this begs the question I think I might be shying away from: am I a winning player?

I.so.wish.I.could.escape.writing.this.post.
But alas, I cannot; 'we do what we must do'. So here goes nothing.

2008 is no more... And, I curse through my teeth my only too common human nature and that stupid 2-hockey-period-timespan-memory of ours, which, at the end of the... year, puts me right in that famous spot: "I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking of how I lost it" (Mike McDermott, Rounders, 1998, John Dahl). Hehe. I also hear Knish's voice sometimes, going "It happens to everyone. Time to time, everyone goes bust" (ibidem). But that's the thing now, is it; I get myself all worked up like that and I haven't even gotten busto. What does that tell me about me, I wonder... Time to take a fscking hard look at meself in a mirror, I think... And what better than a quick wrap-up of 2008.

Maybe I'm focusing too much on the last few weeks, but I must say I feel I failed in 2008. Thing is, I always sucked big time at setting and reaching personal objectives... The irony is, of course, that I am nevertheless quite introspective... And thus, last January, I found myself caught up by the notion that I might had overgrown this flaw of mine, and overblew it a little with this humongous list of goals for 2008:

• Play at least 50,000 hands of online poker
• Play way more live, and find a personal comfort zone
• Settle at NL10, then NL25 and NL50 by the end of the year
• Develop a proficiency for another game (Razz, Stud or Omaha)
• Start dabbing at split games
• Win a tournament
• Pull a major stone-cold bluff
• Hustle some poor schlob in a pub or hustle myself a date :P
• Visit every Montreal poker room
• Take a week-end trip to Atlantic City
• Run a tight blog :P
• Keep the mailing list/discussion group alive
• Stay aggressive, uncompromising and unapologetic at the tables, while remaining affable, lighthearted and zen
• Create myself a slick avatar
• Create a Poker course
• Keep taking bad beats with the reverence and awe of a devout
• Write my Poker & Self-Enlightenment piece

I only managed to crush and achieve one, namely playing at least 50k hands. Actually played in little over 100k online cash game hands in 2008, which is pretty satisfying to me. Among the other numerous objectives, I think I can still say some of them are half-successes;

• I believe I kept a somewhat tight, entertaining blog;
• I probably pulled a very decent bluff, and probably much more, as a matter of fact, but must say I now consider this one the fruit of my Hollywood-based upbringing and that romantic notion that bluffs must be for all the marbles, in a life and death situation, or something... lol bluffaments :D!
• I did not play more than 40ish tournaments, mostly Sit'nGos, in which I kept a positive RoI%.
• The mailing list and poker course thingy might have taken a new bloggish form (to be continued)...
• And lastly, though I had to step back from NL50 at the stroke of midnight, almost, I did get to NL20 and then took a roughly half-decent shot at it, so I can't really rule that one as a total failure.

Still, lots and lots learned... hopefully ;-). And while I do remember I suck at setting up objectives and fighting to accomplish them, I will try and refine and mature from this last year, and manage to set better targets for 2009. I'm thinking: broader... And a lot less of them ;-).

"Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

Ouch. Been mostly too depressed (and yes, busy trying to stop the bleeding... can't really say that I have either... nerf that start of '09 :-P) to post my monthly report for December. While I don't feel like going into details, not yet anyway, I think I fell, very big this time, for my oldest archenemy again, ie, me; overplaying pocket and top pairs, forgetting to think AND act accordingly, not even using stats, even though they're there, staring me in the face, and when using them, doing it just badly, plain and simple. Oh, and yes, combined to all that bad play, and I did play like a dumb fsck, I did run into the coldest mstherfscking streak of my life... (Resigned I am, and blaming it all on luck, I am not...;-))

Anyway, though I do feel embarrassed by it, and not because of volume woes this time (funny how those are easier to cope with at the end of the day... Nerf the result-oriented paradigm I guess :-P), I do have to post the usual graph :-S...


On the positive side of things, since I haven't (yet) decided to call it quits, volume was excellent in December, while keeping my social life pretty active as well. Great. Cinema took the blow though, but hey, it's a juggling act really :-P! And to grant myself kind of perspective, this is actually the first negative month in quite some time... I just have to manage to ignore the voice in my head that goes "Yeah, but what a loss!!!"... lol

Stay tuned for a painstaking wrap-up of 2008, as soon as I muster to courage, cause I'm guessing it's going to be a long one ;-).

Well, it's been a while coming, but I finally hit a rough patch, nay, a fscking wall... Started a little before that fscking Rockets vs Rockets Flush Fiasco, and 7 buy-ins down the hole later, I say merry fscking xmas to me! Thanks, Poker Gods...

What's worse is I don't even know whether NL50 broke me, or if it was all variance... Or, more realistically, a wicked combo of both, combined with me going donkey (that combo sounds O too familiar)... And I know 7 BIs might not be that much, but it got the best of me, and is forcing me to step down to NL20 4 fscking days before the end of the year!!! Irony, God, Faith, Poker, what have you, have a very lousy fscking sense of humor in my book... Maybe it's Karma punishing me for giving my 10 year old nephew a poker chip sets for Christmas?!?!? lol

Anyway, don't really know what to do next... Day off? Prolly the best idea right now... Stepping down to NL20 is definitely the best, safest and wisest play here, I think, although it will mean forfeiting a lot of the Asia bonus... Next best thing would be to shortstack my way back to a decent NL50 roll while continuing to grind said bonus, but, I don't know, shortstacking, really?!?!? Don't we hate those nitty, check-raising mofos?!?!? Dunno... Guess I have to let this one stirr for a bit :S... Hence this post ;). I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: that kinda spot really does feel like a heartbreak, seriously... It takes all the place in my head, even though there's still a voice in there yelling how ridiculous it is to let myself feel that crushed by such a trivial matter compared to how fortunate I actually am of being young (relatively), healthy (relatively), independant (relatively), int... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I still just wanna pounce drinks until I don't feel anything anymore... Hehe, there goes my fondness for pathos again... Alas, it is only barely noon here, so that's out of the question... for now... lol.

On the other hand, Season's Greetings to all!!!! Don't let donkeys and suckouts ruin your holidays - working pretty hard on that myself ;)!

Variance is just another word for "God either doesn't exist or doesn't give a $h1t"...

iPoker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (9 handed) - iPoker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button ($79.96)
Hero (SB) ($77.43)
BB ($62.10)
UTG ($9.25)
UTG+1 ($49.25)
MP1 ($9.50)
MP2 ($101.95)
MP3 ($10)
CO ($47.23)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A♠ A♣
5 folds, CO raises to $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold, CO raises to $10, Hero raises to $77.43 (All-In), CO calls $37.23 (All-In)

Flop: ($94.96) 9♦ Q♦ 6♠ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: ($94.96) 4♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($94.96) 5♦ (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $94.96 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero mucked A♠ A♣ (one pair, Aces).
CO had A♥ A♦ (flush, Ace high).
Outcome: CO won $91.96

---

This has to be the worse bad beat with the money going in pre-flop one can take... Mine anyway... Why o why couldn't I be on the right side of that freaky freak statistical event, damn you, Poker Gods?!?!?!?

equity	win	tie
50%	2.17%	47.83%
50%	2.17%	47.83%

Considering another fscking bad-beat type twist of faith that happened while my pal Yves (real name, I kid you not ;)) and I were watching the Habs game and playing a NLHE Freezout Heads-up on Saturday night. I got dealt pocket rockets, but didn't even have time to look at'em before Yves folded his small blind, to which I shrugged and went "awwwight", peeling my cards out of habit/curiosity only to see those 2 beautiful aces staring me right back in the eye. Then came what I regret the most in like ages... He showed some crap like 92off, so I went "Let's run it, you'll hit 2 pairs, you lousy luckbox!" (he is one luckbox fella :P). And we did. What did I flop? That's right, quads Aces... Quad-fscking-Aces.In.A.Heads-up-Fscking-Match... I knew right there that I'd been in the middle of a variance shit storm since a week, and it was not gonna be over this weekend anyway...

I had to take a pic of that... to attest of it... I swear on my mother's soul it is NOT A RIGGED PIC!!!! Yves can testify if need be... rofl!



So here's a joke about it all, just to make sure I can smile again... lol.

Picking up some pace in clearing this AsiaPoker bonus thingy, I feel the need to post a quick update.

Logged almost 13k hands at NL50 now. And while I cannot say I really feel settled in (feels more like a roller-coaster ride, to be perfectly honest), I do start to feel comfortable with the whole game. So far so good, then.

Bonus-wise, I have now cleared a whooping 7 out 60 ten-dollar payouts, but must admit I kinda still entertain the notion that I might, in the end, pull it out. Remember, the deadline is February 15th!! Still, the gambler in me kinda knows that it will probably come down to what Life has in store for me the next few months... Nerf variance, I guess... lol. Anyway, I'll give it all I got, and we'll see :).

On a somewhat sadder note (yeah, I have a tendency towards pathos, sue me! lol), AsiaPoker's latest update modified the way the selected table is displayed, which basically screws up my whole EyePoker table selection/datamining tool (forum post here)... Of course, I've found a workaround, but it does limit what can only be referred to as table-hopping, which I'll confess doing when tables break down (who doesn't? lol), but hey, I'll take it... Nevertheless, what's actually bugging me the most is the very simple realization that I have become accustomed, addicted perhaps, to my poker tools... I mean, for those using PokerTracker or any other tracking software, could you imagine playing without them??? Sure you can, be only because you love the game so much, right? Hence, we grow dependant of these tools, somehow, and miss them dearly... Definitely something to bare in mind, I would say... maybe by, I don't know, play without them once in a while...

A final sidenote: Nic found a poker webcomic strip which I am still slowly reading, peeling a couple of strips a day, mastering the urge to just go right through them all so I can have something to put a smile on my face in case I run into a couple bad beats/donkey moves... lol. Here's the link, if you don't know about it already; some of them are pretty funny :). Can't help myself: I am now pot-committed to that strip!!!! ROFL!

Had a very satisfying, hard worked, hard fought grinding weekend, and reached a 100,000 hands since I track my results in the process. Woohoo :P! Although it pales in comparison to the daunting task that lays ahead of me; clearing that Asia Poker bonus might not be that easy after all, lol. Played a little over 7k hands and got 3,844 Dragon Points, needing 60k, which means at this rate, I will definitely have to play about 110k hands before February 15th!!! Oh well, I'll do my best, and try not to lose every last shreds of my already iffy social life, lol.

Ok, there's no 2 ways about it: November was a definite, rock-solid, epic FAIL. I'll say it again: EPIC.FAIL.

3, 381 hands played is by no means relevant. And I don't really know what happened, except what I said in my latest post.

Although, on the bright side, November marked my first shot at NL50, which I'm currently still riding. Hopefully, I'll stick around, especially since I laboriously started grinding at The Asia Poker First Deposit Bonus...

To make things right, the graphs, even though a pretty irrelevant sample :(.

November 2008 - BB Won
November 2008 - Showdown

Guess I have to post something... It's been a week after all... But since I haven't played much (actually starting to wonder what the hell I have been up to in that past week...lol), there's not much to say...

Well, yesterday, I got back in the grind of things, with a roller-coaster 700+ hand session, but it was my first decent session in days, so not much to say there either (yeah, I would be feeling I'm wasting paper right now, weren't this thing a blog ;-))... Hope to at least finish the year with a bang, but my last decent month volume-wise seems so long ago, I'm not entertaining too much illusions... Then again, our stupid, cold as a frozen hell Canadian winter is looming, so I might stay a little more home and thus play a little more... Was the case last year anyway... We'll have to wait and see...

Quick note: seems the 60 Minutes special on the Absolute Poker and UB scandal is going to air this Sunday. Pretty curious (and a tad worried, tbh) to see what this will do to the business...

Oh, and finally, to you Americans out there: Happy Thanksgiving!!! Taste that turkey :D!!!

... Not nearly playing enough poker these days... Damn that new addiction to comics!!! Damn that old love for cinema, tv, books and hockey!!! And damn that eternal struggle between chips and chicks!!!! lol

Need.To.Play.More.

Oh man, I have to say sometimes I am very very glad to be a boorish Canuck instead of a boorish American. But other times, I just hate it!!!! Utterly, profoundly hate it... despise it even. Like yesterday, when I finally decided to deposit $600 on The Asia Poker in order to start earning rakeback again (rakefreeze) AND clear their 200% First Deposit Bonus up to $600$(yeah I know, I could have only deposited $300, I am not that dumb ;-)... But I feel way more comfy with $600 to 8-table NL50 while clearing this bonus... and I do have more money in my MB roll, anyway :)), and BAM, I got hammered with roughly a 25% conversion rate... which ended up "costing" me about $150. Grrrrr... and ouch! Of course, this is not as bad as some could first believe... Worse case is I'll withdraw my money with a little loss, if say, the CAD suddenly surges to $0.85USD when I'm good and ready to move on to another bonus... Obviously, a CAD on par would be a disaster, but I'm pretty confident this will not happen for at least (at the very least) for another year. But the thing that does piss me off tremendously is, for the first time in my life, I have to pay attention to these things... lol, I guess...

On the other hand, having gotten used to my Titan roll being in CAD (ie having gotten used to basically never knowing exactly where my roll stands before leaving tables), I must say it is waaaayy better to have your site-roll in the same currency the site is using on the tables ;-).

Ok, from my introductory post, hypothetical readers should have concluded, quite correctly, that I loooooved Rounders. As a matter of fact, I have (somewhat) tempered with the movie business before, and used to review flicks for a local magazine... One of those proverbial first loves, you know ;-). I can't remember not being in love with the silver screen honestly...

I actually remember pretty clearly going to the theater to catch it with my buddy/roommate, and even trying to start our very own homegame afterwards, which featured almost exclusively crazy wild games LOL... But, we were o so broke art students, all of us, so it just didn't take off. And it took me about 7 years to actually get back into poker, mostly because of a random comment at the water cooler on a dull work day. And ever since that day, and the following weekend, I have been fiddling around the metaphysical and philosophical side of the game, mostly trying to work on a series of posts/articles/whathaveyous which I tentatively refer to as Poker & Self-Enlightenment. And one thing I have been wondering for the longest of time is how influencial was Rounders on that famous poker boom... Well, a very interesting thread has popped up today on 2+2 (comment #9 is a copy-paste, btw... Still pretty darn interesting tho ;-)). Felt I kinda needed to post a little something-something about it ;-).

Well, I'm just not that savvy in law lingo and all that twisted logic, so it's still pretty fuzzy, to me anyway :P, but it seems the boorish americans are at it again. Speaking of the famous infamous Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which seems to have gone through at long last... Someone said Bush gang's getting restless about moving out of the White House?!?!?! lol

Anyway, for now, it's not that big a deal for me, considering I am a boorish Canadian... But it is nonetheless very worrying, since our stupid Prime Minister is a definite Bush-wannabe... And did some sneaky stuff like Bush's gang did with stappling this UIGEA to another, undisputed bill (SAFE Port Act); Stephen Harper did indeed learned from the Bush administration (cf. C-10 Bill).

But still, this morning, I feel the pond is waaaaayy smaller :S...

2+2 Apocalyptic Thread here.
Somewhat positive piece here.

The End of An Era, really... Well sorta. My incredibly juicy 40% rakeback deal from PokerStrategy.com is no more. Sniff sniff. We had a very good run, and I got roughly $175 in rakeback, which I can't complain about, now can I? Now, long live bonus whoring starting... now :P. Just need to move my roll... I hate that management stuff, really, but I will not pass by all those sweet, sweet bonuses. I have actually lost enough time not clearing them already, imo :). If you have never been there, don't know it even exists, or haven't paid attention to any of my widgets, click here and start doing the right thing, pimp your roll ;-).

Oh, and for those doing donkaments out there; the new WSOP Main Event Champion was crowned yesterday. Turns out he's one hell of a young kid: 22 years old and change... Take that Nio-Nio ;-). TSN's telecast is aired tonite, at 10pm EST.

Man, did I draw the table! Was basically the only one who had decent understanding of the game and could actually explain it to a bunch of criminologist ladies. Of the lot at my table, 2 guys kinda knew about Holdem, like, the rules... somewhat. One of them arguing with me that the board was dealt one card at a time, including the flop... That's right, you read right... What the fsck do you say to a guy who looks you dead in the eye and claims rather firmly that you do not deal a 3-card flop??? WHAAAAT!! I was about to call the floor when it dawned on him, and he dropped the expected "Oh, no, you're right... my bad!". LOL. And what a let down when I discovered the dude was NOT an action junkie ;-)...

Anyway... I didn't want to be doing the de facto dealing, but couldn't really help myself with such a table, and my temperament... No dealers in a fundraiserament is a big no-no, in my opinion; no-limit donkaments inevitably bring the numerous split pots, and those will dramatically increase in numbers with newbies AND rebuys, and can one seriously hope a newbie to cope and deal those situations effectively?!?!? I think not, ldo. So, I ended up doing all the work, surprisingly enjoying it :P... And I'll confess I sheepishly tried to let the n00bs have a good time rather than sharkishly attack there inexperience and lack of basic odds understanding. I am not that big of a shark either, I guess, but I do believe this was not the place for that kind of behavior, although the 1500$ payout for first place was indeed kinda juicy ;-).

Ok, so the donkament itself... Wow. Not.That.Great.Actually.
No Felt: Sucks
No Dealer: Sucks
15-Minutes Level: Sucks
No-Dealer + 15-Minutes Level + Newbies = Not.Quite.Poker.

Cards and chips were, to my utter astonishment, quite decent; clean Copag decks with cut card (although I'm guessing some tables might not even have used them :P), and very nice chips that I didn't take the time to properly identify (sorry Nic :P), even though there were cheap, lousy plastic thingies in the mix. First hour 20$ rebuys for 1500 chips, and 3 types of add-ons at the first break (20$ for 2k, 40$ for 5k and 60$ for 10k... but I didn't bring enough dough... nerf me).

All in all, a somewhat typical fundraiserament, with all those incredibly juicy pot odds!! LOL. As for my play, I grinded my way to table chip leader early on, but couldn't grind any decent-sized stack considering my newbie opponents tended to fold every time I raised :S. I got picked up, twice back to back (lol), after the break, and ended up shoving dark from the button against queens and hit 2 pairs, which brought me back to a whooping M of 2.5 :P. Looking down a the KJ of spades the very next hand, I shoved again, ready to go on with the near 2 hour drive back home... Was called by Cowboys (ouch) and Ax of spades (double ouch), and hit the rails, with an opponent going "he can't leave"... Funneh.

In the end, I must admit not being quite satisfied with my take on it all, because I sincerely feel I could have gotten way deeper in this... But, my table draw didn't help I think, with a bunch of passive newbies (not a single action type in there... I was the action junkie, actually, and that's saying a lot :P). And, a circumstance outside of my control also dictated things a little bit, as I could very well might have been left stranded in Lachenaie, with no means of getting back home, other than a rather costly cab ride... Anyway, I can comfort myself with the karma points I got for being there, giving money to a bunch of kids who just want to play hockey, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, someone from my table found a new hobby :).

Quick update after about 1000 hands at NL50: so far so good, but I have to admit my 2.5BIs upswing is mainly due to getting action when holding the nuts rather than my outplaying opponents... I mean, 4betting all-in preflop with rockets is a no-brainer and very, very easy, but when the 3bettor calls, it's sweeeeet. Especially when the rockets hold, ldo. So, basically so far so good, but not much to say. A tad more 3betting preflop I think... And loads of fscking shorties.... "We hatesss 'em, my presssiouss, we hatesss 'em." lol

Off to a fundraiser donkament tonite, for my nephew's hockey team. I have a feeling this is gonna be one hell of a poopshoot ;-)...