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 ;)!

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 ;-).

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.

Woohoo!! That's it, an incredibly lucky big blind double-up got me there! And while I do feel that dirty, cheap feeling you get when sucking out on someone (I don't know for you, but I do anyway), it really is overturned by the achievement of a yearly goal... Well, the closest I got to it so far anyway, cause I still have to settle there, make it my new home and such, you know. And this might very well be a longer bout since I plan on grinding 40 buy-ins before moving up this time... I just know I play waaay better when comfy, and being appropriately rolled is synonymous with comfort for yours truly :). Plus, even though my current bankroll management is very solid, I do think 40 BIs becomes a bare minimum very soon when moving up in stakes. I guess I'm not that much of gambler after all :P! True to word (sorta :P), glancing at my spreadsheet and seeing my whooping 1G sitting there in the total box, I can't help but get that old feeling, the very same one I got when I was an always-broke-eternal-student guy just after making what counted as a 'score', and can even hear the voice of that guy, scared shitless of his own empty pockets, whispering malignently "Take the money and run, Forrest, run!" ROFL!! The times they are a changin', I s'ppose, cause I won't run... not yet anyway ;-).

Oh, and K9o slowplayed from the BB FTFW!!!! Man, thank God I don't do that too often!!

And we are off to my very real NL50 session... Nittyness in all its splendor here I come :D!

I was going to post about the harshness of coming back and karmic retribution for my SSing bout, getting walks with Rockets on the first hand of my 2nd session after my return, sets of Cowboys getting rivered, etc., etc., but then I remembered I've been there, done that, bought the whiny T's and threatened to quit the game :P!!! Thus, moving on... lol

I've been wanting to post about the fact that I finally enabled my MoneyBookers account for a while now, but it kinda slipped into the cracks of my summer vacations... Well, here's my chance, lol!

So, it's done. Been done for a while, actually; somewhere around July, if I recall correctly. Pretty useful, and very righteous, if you see what I mean; if you're anywhere serious with your online poker, you definitely owe it to yourself to find some way of managing your online bankroll. Sure, playing penny or nickels&dimes games doesn't require that much management, but if your goal is to climb the stakes, sooner or later, you'll be playing for amounts of more and more relevance, shall we say... And, if utlimately, you want to make money out of poker, you'll have to cash some of your winnings out...LDO, I know, but somehow, I think this is kinda overlooked and/or forgotten... And, otherwise, you're just a tourist with chips destined to go in someone else's BR. MoneyBookers is just one of the solutions available out there, and while I do not really feel like arguing their case, I will advise any half-serious player to lurk around 2+2's threads regarding Bankroll management and find out how other people in a situation similar to his or hers do handle their online money. Contrary to live Poker rooms, where the money is explicitly going both ways (it seems to be more of a question of how much goes from the players towards the house, really), there is a sense of one-way transactions with online poker rooms. I had such a feeling, anyway :). Until you go through the process of cashing out some money yourself, of course, and this is when you understand the necessity of having somekind of e-wallet set up, be it only to minimize the hassle and delays. Perhaps this thought popped in here cause I'm a winning player, though, come to think of it... lol. In any case, it is, in my humble opinion, a must.

Quick update on my play: that MB setup allowed me to shift things around a little. As of the end of July 2008, PartyPoker is out. Sorry guys, I got my books bonus, and the client just sucks asses big time, lol! I was about to move to The Asia Poker for some bonus whoring/rakeback deal, but I learned from TitanPoker staff that the famous Summer 40% Rakeback bonus I got through PokerStrategy was still on until further notice. So it's fair to say I'm settled at Titan for a while ;-). 40% rakeback ftw!!!! As far as limits are concerned, I'm pretty comfy at NL20, back to some decently played real poker (ie, deepstack poker; death to shorties!!!! Wait, can I say that anymore?!?!?! lol)... And I'll never go back to shortstacking... unless it's mandatory bonus whoring, of course ;-).

All in all, poker is back in my life, and I feel pretty good about it all... I will confess my August hiatus kinda scared me a little; since I so didn't think about the game I thought I might have gotten bored with it... Phew!! lol. Still. I. Love. That. Game. (mostly hold'em, tbh, tho ;-)... for now)

So, yester evening, I'm playing in a 1$ Sit'n Go (I know I know, my stakes are pretty pathetic right now... this is why I label myself as 'learning the game' still :P). Since I am the product of my time, I cannot live without noise, music, something to create the audio background track. Mostly tv, in my case, for I must confess I am what could be called a "tv kid"...

Becoming the perfect Poker geek, I watch the free CGTV channel (Casino Game TV) on a regular basis. I think Poker Night Live is an awesome place to learn plenty of ropes. Anywho, yesterday, I happened to catch a show I wanted to give a shot for a while; The John Patrick Show. Now I know from a poker buddy of mine (I actually only have one for the time being - sad sad sad... And my other friends ARE gamers, just not gamblers :( ) that the dude (John Patrick that is) advocates to play "any two suited cards". Now, I definitely don't know much about poker, but I know this: beginners overvalue suitedness. I know, I did lol. Roughly, suitedness will give you between 0.5% to 2.x% edge against an unsuited hand. Not that relevant when you're a 3 to 1 dog, now is it?

Anyway, this episode was not about poker; it was entitled Introduction to Blackjack and Money Management if I remember correctly :). Besides giving me some interesting insights about blackjack, which I know squat about :P, Patrick dude said one thing that really stuck. Talking about money management, he gave a simple guideline to keep a close monitoring eye on your session's bankroll; simply aim at winning 20% of your bankroll (or table buy-in would be more appropriate in our case :) ), and quit when stuck no more than 40%. I thought this made a lot of sense, especially since I was having a hard time with the burden of having lost an entire buy-in earlier that very same night. The psychological toll of losing all one's session money can be quite overwhelming, and this simple ratio can help one cope better with losses.