Habanero....Surprise?

I have no idea how to start this blog. It has been an eventful couple of days. First off, I've been watching the food channel religiously and got somewhat inspired to be the next Bobby Flay. I decided to try and make some of his green chili burgers so I drove over to the local food city and bought green chili's, jalapeno peppers and habanero peppers to mix into the burgers. I come home very excited and pull out our dull knives along with the cutting board. I start chopping up all the chili's chef style then go about to wash my hands. Mistake #1. I then go about my business and decided to take a piss. Mistake #2. Holy #$%*. Literally, 5 minutes later, my junk is on fire. I can't even explain the pain. It feels as if someone lit a bonfire in my pants. The pain is unbearable for 3 hours!! I start googling remedies and the first thing I find is that when cutting peppers you have to wash the area with bleach because of the high concentration of capisicum or something. GG me. I finally find a remedy that tells me you need to use vegetable oil. I go on to put my junk in vegetable oil for 20 minutes then take a freezing cold shower for 1 hour. After this long shower, vegetable oil and half a bottle of body wash the fire is gone. The feeling after is undescribable. It felt so good and I felt so relieved. I had the biggest smile on my face and decided that it would be the perfect time to start grinding. The session was one of my best recently and I went on to win 8 buyins along with clearing my $275 mid year iron man bonus. Great day for the bankroll, but I am not sure the pain was worth it. The burgers were also some of the best I've ever had. Thanks Bobby Flay.

The weekend got much better after the fire burning incident. Friday night we all decide to go out and get a couple drinks. We go out to our favorite bar (Half Barrel) and throw down some ice cold brews and take a couple shots. We then head over to another bar across the street and this is where the fun begins. I walk in and see all my friends there. I was like damn, what are all these people doing here, usually they call me when they go out. Then I see my girlfriend sitting at the bar and I'm like wtf. She was supposed to come in Saturday afternoon because she had something else to do. Much to my surprise she is amazing and it was surprise going away party/weekend for me. I can say I was 100% surprised and had no idea. It was a great night and a great time seeing all those people come out for the going away party. We repeated the feat Saturday night with a keg, rockband, flip cup and another night of debauchery at the bars. I have to say that this was the best surprise I've ever had. Thanks gf. Highlight of the night had to be one of my friends doing the soulja boi dance around all the pool tables. (We all know who you are.) Bah.

I didn't play much poker this weekend, but we saw Orphan on Sunday. Pretty good movie, and kind of freaky also. I know I am never going to adopt after seeing that movie. It's storming pretty badly over here right now and the internet is being super gay and keeps timing out every 2 minuts so it's making it really hard for me to play online. Really frustrating because I'm bored, just watched the finale of Daisy of Love and did I mention that I'm bored. FMI (Fu*k my internet). Hopefully the network people fix this problem so I can play a bit because I am not tired at all. Maybe this is a sign that I should do some Spanish homework. <---- Ya right. GG. Shipshape.

Grind Grind Grind

Holy! downswingaments. After the FT on Sunday FTP really turned on the rollercoaster switch. Had to fight through 2 7 buy in downswings the past 4 days. The .50 1 6max tables are really fun to play with tons of 3 and 4 betting. Really makes the game interesting and challenging. I think I'm getting it together since switching back from FR since I don't have my big monitor anymore. I beleive I can 8 table 6 max, but I'm going to just stick with 6 for now since you really have to think on some decision instead of being on auto pilot in FR. I've decided I'm going to start mixing in more tournies to my schedule. I am also going to make it a point to build up some T$ so I can play a couple FTOPS events as well.

Had an oral exam in Spanish today and it went really well. Just 10 more days of class and I'm free from the education world. This class is similar to having a 30hr a week job because of the sheer volume of homework that is involved. 3.5 hrs of class then 3 more hours of online and book work are enough to make anyone go crazy.

This weekend should be a nice time to relax. Really looking forward to posting up in the living room while watching lots and lots of movies. My gf (Hi!) is also coming into town on Saturday for her last trip to Knoxville while I'm there at least. Word of advice: Knoxville is one broke ass city.

Shipshape crew has been doing real well lately. "1m2g00d" had a double final table experience on Tuesday and took home ~$1k for his efforts. Congrats on that and hopefully we can all FT/Ship some FTOPS events. I think we are all due. GG. Shipshape.

Things starting to turn around

Since last week was really bad, this week had to get off to a good start. Decided to play a couple tourneys on Sunday and was out early in a bunch except 1. It was the 200k double deuce on FTP and had 11k runners. I usually don't like playing monster fields, but I used 4,400 FTPs to join in and read the tag line, "Bring $22 and a dream." I navigated the field pretty well and always had the average stack. When we got down to 45 players I won 2 big flips to propel me to the final 18. This is where I started getting really lucky. My 77 ran into JJ and I rivered a flush then my A7 outdrew AQ to keep me alive. I eventually final tabled and pushed with AQ but I was ousted by AK for 8th place and $3100. I feel terrible about my play because I knew he had a big hand, but just got impatient in a bad spot. I could have easily folded preflop but I guess I'm a big fish since I didn't. O well. Still a nice payout, but I really wanted the 33k for first. I'm going to grind a bit after class everyday so I can maintain my iron man status and clear the mid-year bonus.

In other news, I'm possibly going to the Horseshoe in Indiana on Tuesday for the day with some buddies. It all depends on my Spanish class's agenda for Wednesday. The poker room there is really nice and it brings in a lot of easy money from neighboring big cities. Only downfall is that you have to pay for drinks because Indiana state law does not allow for the free solicitation of alchol.

I've finally started to pack up my apartment to get ready for my drive home. I've planned it out and decided to go to Nashville for 4 days and spend time with my gf, then head over to Tunica on the way back. After Tunica I'm going to stop in Baton Rouge for a night and stay with some family, then finish it off all the way back to good 'ol Sugar Land, Texas. It'll be nice to sit at home for a while since I've rarely been home the past 4.5 years. Ship this job offer that I've been working on and everything should be playing out perfectly. Time to finish some espanol. GG. Shipshape

Sunday majors blow

Played the 750k on FTP and got donked out. My AK ran into a super fish's monster A6. Of course he hit his 3 outer on the river to send me packing. That's poker. Also played a couple other tourneys this week and couldn't hold the big hand to get that big stack. I'm still looking forward to the middle of August where I can start the grind back at the .50/1 tables and make some nice cash. Those big payouts in the tourneys are still intriguing and hard to stay away from.
I have an interview with a consulting company later today and hopefully that goes well. Would really love to have a job right when I finish school so I don't have a gap in my resume. The money would be great to have for next year's WSOP. Ship some bracelets one time.
Got to keep this one short so I can prepare for this interview. GG. Shipshape.

Robbed!!

FML. I wake up Thursday morning to go to Spanish and I can't find my backpack. I look around and notice my 24in monitor gone as well. I knock on my roomates door and we find out the Wii and all the Wii games are gone also. GG. We had been robbed sometime during the night. This really sucks, but the culprits could not have been dumber. They took my wallet as well and used my card at McDonalds. I don't know why because there was $300 cash in my wallet as well. Idiots. Much to my dismay I had a check book in my backpack and they started cashing checks and signing my name, but as dumb as they are, they wrote their names on the check and have a huge security fingerprint on each one. So now it's all in the investigators hands. Hopefully they aprehend the robbers quickly so we can get our stuff back. This really blows because I had to close my bank account and I have no money. It's also frustrating because now all the places they cashed those checks at are coming after me since the checks never went through. Just a big hassle, but in the end it should be fine. I'm just hoping the process does not drag through, but it shouldn't since we did alot of investigative work and built up good evidence to give to the police department.
Poker wise I've decided to play the 750k guarantee today and some other tourneys which I'm going to use some tokens for. Maybe this week will turn around with a 135k ship in a Sunday major. Run good one time.
On another note, I talked about a guy who ran $100 to $70k. An update on him shows that he ended up losing it all or his account got hacked. It's hard to tell, but this is a good warning to everyone to keep your passwords safe and if you play on Stars to get the pincode generator. There is nothing worse than seeing your bankroll at $0 when you log in. Then you find out its some hacker who chip dumped everything to a friend. Honestly, the poker sites are not responsible for this as much as you would want to hate them. So keep your stuff safe!!! GG. Shipshape.

Tunica

Tunica was lots of fun, but -EV financially. My 2 buddies and I arrived at the Gold Strike around 930pm on Thursday. We checked in then headed to the blackjack tables. I came up with the great idea of going to the high limit room and managed to lose 1k in 12 hands. GG. After having my quickest blackjack session ever I decided to go up to the poker room to get these losses back. I carried on to play for 5 hours and managed to make $600 at the 1/2 NL game. The games had some decent players but they were easily exploitable if you played back at them. After the session I decided to call it a night and head to bed.
The next day we all got up late and ate at the food court. We headed back to the blackjack tables and we all made money. I was up about $300 after some single-deck blackjack, then ran up to the poker room. Big hand of the session involved me straddling. 7 players limped in and I rose it to $25 with AKs. Short stack with $80 goes all in and another guy says f' it and goes all in with $100. I insta-call and was up against 55 and 99. Much to my liking I turned a flush....oops. I was now finally up on the trip, but drunkness starts to kick in.
We had all been drinking heavily and I was starting to feel it. I'll keep the rest of the night short, but it basically boiled down to me losing $1500 in blackjack. I was pretty pissed at myself the next morning and decided to just cut my losses short. Grinded a break-even day and just chilled the rest of the trip until we had to go home on Sunday.

Blackjack: -$2500
Poker: +$1000

No more dumb blackjack for me..lol. Just stick to poker and stop playing the dumb 'fun' games.

Online poker wise I've realized I am not going to come close to my goals. I'm already a week behind and this Spanish class that just started is alot more work then I thought. It's class for 3.5 hours then almost 3 hours of homework a day. In order to ensure that I do not mess up and keep myself from getting my degree I cashed out almost everything on Full Tilt and Stars so I don't grind instead of studying. This will give me a much needed break from poker, allow me to concentrate and finish this class, and give me a chance to apply for some jobs. I was reading about a guy who deposited $100 and ran it to $70k playing PLO here. I decided to try so I cashed out down to $500 on FTP and went for it. Much to my dismay it did not work out. LOL. It was worth a shot.

Time to go back to the library and watch some dumb Spanish movie. GG. Shipshape.

July and a personal prop bet

The month of June is finally over and overall it was a pretty good month. Made around 2k in 18k hands and was helped out with a final table in a $24+$2 tourney for around $650. I've decided to start the month of July off by cashing my online bankroll to $1k and apply a strict BR management approach. My goal is to turn this into $2500 by the end of the month and hopefully I can achieve this with higher volumes. I was motivated to do this because I decided to read the Ferguson $0 to $10k challenge and I really wanted to give this a shot except start with $1k instead of free rolling it up forever. Hopefully this works out and I can refine my game with more discipline.

Goals:
- Make $1500
- Don't step out of my bankroll
- Run good
- 45k hands
- Finish last class and get my degree
- Find a job for 6 months
- Clear iron man bonus
- Workout more

Tomorrow is my final exam for my logistics class and right after me and a couple buds are heading to Tunica for 4 days. This should be a great time to relax and play some easy live poker and degen it up in blackjack. Hopefully the weekend turns out to be profitable and I come back with thousands of dollars. Bah, ya right.

My quote of the day: "Curiosity killed the poker player." - Me

GG. Shipshape.