I am such a ding-a-ling. Been wondering for a couple days now why I can't seem to play at least an half-decent numbers of hands every day of every week... Well, I think I got it; it all comes down to priorities, hehe. Thing is, there are a couple things I love doing in my free time, the least of which is procrastination :P. Amongst the other stuff, in no particular order, there's tv and cinema, friends, books, fiction (we'll get back to this), and there's the oldest hobbie of them all, sports watching, mainly hockey, but October also means MLB playoffs, and with my beloved Red Sox just shy of another run at the World Series and now out of it, I did spend some evenings watching the best ball games of the year. Love it, but it is time consuming. A case could be made that it's easy to multi-task while watching baseball, which I totally agree with, but I decided some time ago that I would not spread my attention when playing cards. Thus, music is all that's allowed while grinding :).

So basically, what happened after my month off in August is the famous infamous switcheroo in my priorities. All in all, I'm now focusing a lot of energy on fiction again... Yeah, fiction, as in watching, reading, writing and thinking fiction. Which of course tends to clog my stupid brains with storyline permutations, characters development, themes, ideas, twists, turns, dialogs... the works. And while I really love getting back into it, I must also admit it kinda pisses me off not being able to do everything I'd like to do the way I'd like to do it any given week. Damn those measly 168 hours!!! Seems like it's definitely time for some serious reassessment and a good, hard look at myself in the proverbial mirror...

Being asked "what the fsck you doing with those????" by a buddy, colleague or co-drinker when thumb-flipping some poker chips in a bar always makes me ponder the reasons for me to play poker... Being myself a pretty introspective fellow, I tend to constantly question my life, and having read Schoonmaker kinda helps routinely reassessing my poker shit. But not enough, it seems... So, when answering this WTF?!? from the latest co-drinker with an unexpected "Cause I'm an overly anxious guy who used to chew his fingernails, and flipping poker chips is ZE thing I found to stop this bad habit", I can't help but ask myself if I'm not just bullshitting my friend, being a full-of-shit wannabe hustler yapping stupid answers to what I consider relatively irrelevant questions... And correlate to this is, why do I (still) play cards?

When I was reading Schoonmaker, I think I broke it down into something like that:

1) Measuring myself: 35%
2) Money: 25%
3) Accomplishment: 15%
4) Excitement: 15%
5) Socialize: 5%
6) Pass time: 5%

And now, after this elongated happy hour where I found myself in the bathroom, writing a reminder on my hand to try and answer that epitome of a question of "why do you play poker", reminder which was later seen by a very good friend of mine, whom got curious to know what this was all about, and obviously went "So, why do you play???" with a wink in the eye, I spontaneously answered the archetypal machismo answer "to make money"... Which I used to try and avoid, because of the whole machismo thing, as a matter of fact. But as of now, I think there might be something here... Reassessment really is a necessity in one's life, and poker really is a micro-life of sort for sure! Maybe it's time to change the ratios above ;-)...

...

Just skimmed through my old "monthly analysis" posts and saw the Epic Fail one for last June. Funny how things are all relative. Like position, lol. Just saying cause, this time around, I'm choosing leniency towards myself, since I "only played" 5,233 hands in the month. Thing is I just came back from a month of almost no play that clearly questioned my commitment to the game, so let's be realistic here :). And I'm pretty happy to go pheww! and reiterate: I.Love.This.Game. :D

And glad to be back. With a very decent month of September money-wise but quite flimsy on the volume side. Which is now my new old objective: 12k hands a month for the rest of the year. With the fall and the cold and the rain/snow just around the corner (I hate you!), I feel pretty confident about achieve this. Not sure it'll be enough to win me a volume bet with Nic, but hey, let's hope it snowballs! Especially since I kinda found myself another hobby, grinding at my grinding time like a sour blister. I am speaking of comics, of course. Combined with work, cards, cinema, sports (hockey's about to be back - damn I hope this is the year :P! Oh... but Go Sox Go... Red Sox, that is - lousy Black Sox snuck in, lol), books, although comics have pretty much took their spot, except for poker books (I'm a bit behind, currently finishing PNL1... For reviews, skim through 2+2 :)), and a somewhat existing social life, I feel I need more than 168 hours a week... Ok. This whiny bid was brought to you by AlLaf Inc., AlLaf Inc., the dream is here!! ROFL

In any case, I'm off to a good start in October... We shall see, won't we... Here are the graphs for September.

September 2008 - Money Won
September 2008 - Big Blinds Won
September 2008 - Showdown

♠♥♦♣

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)

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Well, August's gone. My favorite month of the year, no doubt about it. And I did enjoy it this year; one of the best August in years to be quite frank :). But that somehow, and somewhat surprisingly, meant being off poker. As in out of the game almost entirely... Kinda weird... Enough to trigger some doubtful questioning, anyway... Turns out I went on vacation, and ended playing something like 200 hands tops during those two weeks... Plus 2 very nice, drunk, friendly sessions with old buddies... And that's all the poker I saw. Thing is, I work with computers, and the last year has tended to be all about me sitting in front a computer, be it at work, or at home, grinding my online poker bankroll with more and more enthusiasm... And when I finally hit my summer vacations, I just didn't feel like sitting at my PC... Not. At. All. Even when roaming inside cause of some stupid rain or last minute change of plans, I always opted for my couch, the Olympics, a comic or book, or some movie. I did catch up on stuff I wanted to read or watch or re-watch :). That Dune extended version is one piece of crap of editing, even though it shows some pretty interesting added scenes :P. Anywho, not much poker, to say the least. Thus, I can now say it's all my vacations' fault :P!

Still, returning from vacation tends to slow one's pace down quite a bit, at work for sure, but also everywhere else, just a little bid. The whole sit back groove, basically... And coming home from the office the first couple of days, one feels a tad more tired then used to. Thus, I decided to sacrifice August 2008, so to speak. I played a whooping 1,416 hands :|!!!! And while not being the slowest month ever, it is the lowest amount of poker played since I took it a tad more seriously, about a year ago... Check this out:


Crazy. But, then again, as much as I love the game, it felt like I needed this vacation. Time will tell...

In the meantime, for the sake of continuity, here's one of the 3 usual graphs (I figure it's not that relevant a month anyhow :P).