Friday, December 5, 2008

World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I haven't played poker in awhile but I will be playing in this

Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 541964



Hope to see you at the tables!!!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Busy Living or Busy Dying

I always seem to be killing time at nights especially since it seems I haven't had the undying urge to play poker online. I have been giving it a rest and I have to say I have missed it a bit but not enough to play and then fret over the fact that I didn't do this or pushed a hand to far or not enough, the very least is that I have been sleeping better instead of having these thoughts invading my slumber. I will get back to it eventually but for right now it's not to be.

The class at the Y has been going well and as I have said before I really am enjoying teaching martial arts and to feel a real passion for something that I haven't felt for in a very long time or ever. I think this has been what has been missing from my poker game. Like poker I know that I am not the best Tang Soo Do practitioner out there but it does not effect my bottom line like it does in poker. Seeing my students under me grow and develop a passion for the art like I have. Sharing my knowledge with other people is what it is all about. If I could just find a way to generate more interest in what we are doing and have the program really grow.

I am learning everyday that I teach something new about myself and it's giving me a deeper understanding of what it means to be a true practitioner of the art. Everyone that studies martial arts is ultimately looking to earn a black belt and feels that is a great accomplishment. I have to say that it truly is and I felt more satisfaction earning my first Dan (degree) then I think I did in getting my college degree. The reality of it is that I it is just the beginning and you don't really understand that until you have been studying for many years as a black belt. I going on a decade of having my 1st Dan and I feel that there is still so much that I can still learn. I am doing such advanced techniques but there is always something to gain from doing the first form you ever learned. When you stop taking something new away from that you should think about doing something else in life because that has lost all meaning to you. The idea is simple you should learn something new everyday of your life because that is what keeps you interested in living. If you have it all figured out you have nothing to look forward to and you might as well quit living. As Stephen King wrote in "The Shawshank Redemption" "You either busy living or busy dying." So growing everyday from finding something new to spark your mind is being busy living. I hope I never figure it all out because then that night that I go to bed I will have nothing to look forward to when I wake up so I might as well just die in my sleep. Our black belts are actually Midnight Blue becuase Balck is finality and death and the midnight blue is symbolic to allowing more growth.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Poker, Pallin, Soccer and Martial Arts

I have been rather silent in the past few months and I just don't know what to say. Nothing much is happening on the poker front. I have decided to take a bit of a hiatus from online play it just wasn't as much fun as it had been in the past and I think I was putting to much pressure on myself to have positive results in the form of monetary return and I wasn't getting the results that I liked. I played live a bit back up at Foxwoods and had I good result at the low limit tables but I blew most of it playing a Sit'n go where I bubbled out in fourth. I thought I had been discplined enough to resist the siren call of the sitn'go but alas I was weak and paid for my sins.

I have been gathering an interest in following Soccer and have been sucked into caring about the matches from many different leagues. English Premier League, Scottish Premier League(being part Scot I just have to), La Liga, Barcalona looks like the team for me, UEFA league Championships and yeah even MLS even though I know they are the red headed step child of world soccer. I have settled in on Celtic for the SPL even though it seems like I am a winner picker there but my Grandmother was form Glasgow and for some reason the Rangers don't seem to speak to me. EPL I haven't settle on a team a friend of mine is a Man U. nut but I am not committed to them I think I am leaning towards Liverpool but haven't made a public commitment as of yet. For the MLS I am a glutton for punishment because like every New York fan who roots for teams that play in Giants Stadium it's feast or famine and nothing in between so I have to say I am a Red Bulls fan and maybe they will have better luck once their new Soccer specific stadium is built and they are in there own home. Even though if they can't win on the road they will never make the playoffs. With World Cup qualifiers happening as we speak there is a bunch to be excited about and to hold my interest.

When it comes to politics I am very disappoint in the whole lot and am very afraid for this country that we live in. The latest example is the Sarah Pallin fiasco yeah that's the way to be the mavrick McCain appeal to the wacko religious right and delude yourself in thinking the women of this country will give in on every important value that is dear to them that this Moose shooting pit bull of a politician thinks should be taken away will give them votes because she has a vagina and are pissed off at Obama because he beat Hillary fair and square and didn't pick her as his running mate. Talk about being out of touch. Oh since I don't believe I am part of the media I will say what everyone is thinking, Pallin's failed policies of absentience only sex education came to bite her in the ass and to think that her daughter decide to have this child is something to be proud about and having marry this yahoo is the best think for this innocent child that is cooking in her uterus is one of the biggest piece of hipocracy when no one out there is condemning her for having premarital sex to begin with. Enough ranting I think I have say all I can without my head exploding.

I personal note I have been teaching my Tang Soo Do class for almost 6 months now and I seriously considering opening up a private studio as soon as I feel I can make a go at it. More to come as that develops.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Doing my part, are you?

I long for the days when I would drive around town and try to find the gas station that had gas at less the a $1.30 a gallon? I know I maybe dating myself but that was less than 10 years ago. Now I am searching online to find gas that is as close to $4.00 a gallon as possible. Now in the ten years since my salary has not increase 4 fold to keep up with this. So what is this one man to do? I could win the lottery but I actually think I'm not the only one trying this tact. I could telecommute but first I would have to find a job that would allow me to do that. I could sell it all and move to an island and start bartending at a beach bar, I haven't discussed this with the wife but I think she would be down with that.

Seriously what I am doing is finding other modes of transportation. My hours at work are not the most conducive to taking the bus even though it is a short walk to the bus stop form my house. I only live less then 3 miles from my job so I have decided to ride my bike. I bought the bike about 4 years ago and never really used it as much as I would have like to. I have always like going on bike rides and I have always said I would rather ride ten miles on a bike then jog one mile. The only problem with the bike riding is that I get off of work at 10:30 in the evening and it is mostly up hill on the way home. I have the requisite lights, the bright head light and the blinking tail light and reflective gear, a crazy yellow reflective vest you can see from the moon if there is light shined on it. I have been doing it for about a week now and I am actually enjoying the time that I am alone on the road. It has been very healthy for me both physically and mentally. The best part is that I am barley using my car and I have stretched out the times between fill ups. I may not put an end to the OPEC cartel but damn its making a difference in my wallet. So as my bank account gets bigger my waistline is getting smaller and the oil companies aren't getting richer and that is something.

What are you doing?

Friday, May 23, 2008

Do I really need a new something else to worry about?

I have never been much of a sports fan. I really just didn't care enough. I always thought that there were more important things to care about in this world, like world peace, AIDS, Crack and Bernie Getz. I was a music geek in High School and knew more about Beethoven, Benny Goodman and Billy Joel then the Yankees or any other professional team. I was in the marching band and went to every football game for my years there. When I went to college to study music I joined the pep band and even the fraternity that organized it, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia a professional music fraternity. In going to all these game I rooted for the home team like nobody's business, but I never care much about the great American pastime, never memorized players or stats. I was only interested in one world series that was the '86 Mets/Boston because my roommate was a crazy ass Mets fan. The scary part of what is happening to me right now is that I am actually caring about soccer.

I work with a kid that is a Manchester United freak and I have been following his ups and downs throughout the season this year and I was truly disappointed that I wasn't able to watch the whole Chelsea/Man U match on Wednesday. I was able to get to a TV during the extra time and shoot out and Holy shit that was some serious edge of your seat cardiac inducing action. The last couple of World Cups I would actually try to follow the teams and when the US made it as far as it did the last time I actually watch the final and witnessed the headbutt heard around the world. So I'm not completely ignorant.

The problem I am having is following the EPL is that I can figure out how all the qualifying for the European cups works and who gets automatic entry and who doesn't let alone know who plays for who. What I really like is relegation because you actually care about the competition at the bottom of the rankings as well as the power houses at the top of the league. This is something that I think should be introduced in the US. Can you imagine if the Yankees have a really shitty season that the would have to play Triple AAA and some farm team moves up to the Majors, now that would be excitement. I know the European Cup is about to begin and I will watch with interest but I think I am starting to care about the New York Red Bulls and the MLS. I know they are the red headed stepchild in the world of soccer but what the hell. I just might not tell my Man U freak friend he may not understand.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Holy Crap...

It's been over three months since my last post and I don't think anyone noticed. That's ok because it is mostly mental masturbation for me and it is really just a creative outlet to clear the monkey brain that is my mind.

Let me sum up:

Poker sucking and I have lost some passion for online play. Haven't gotten up to Foxwoods since last post anyway and seriously craving some live action.

Work is just going, no better no worst. The new Karate class is coming along, I just wish I had a few more students but that all may change soon. Something is in the works, more once I know.

Munchkin is great as always, the wife is good as well and has come to the conclusion that we need to do something about the environment that we live and I am all for that even though it means a bunch of manual labor on my part.

If anyone out there cares about what I have to say just drop me an email or a comment so I can decide if I have to be truly creative or just write to amuse myself.

Goodnight and Good Luck!!!

Monday, March 3, 2008

$4.00 and a dream

The New York State Lottery used to have an ad campaign that's tag line was "All you need is a dollar and a dream." and if you a degenerate gambler all you needed was a few hundred dollars and a dream. My father used to buy a couple tickets a week and I really don't know how much he invested in his dream but I know it really wasn't much. Then one day when I was 25, I was living with my parents after college and waiting to get married for the first time and my father knocked on my bedroom door and and came in and closed the door behind him. this freak me out because even as a child this wasn't something that he would have done. He told be he needed to tell me something and if he didn't tell someone he was going to explode but to please not tell my mother. Now thoughts of him telling me that he was in the CIA and had assassinated some world leader and saved the world. No, it was that he finally had hit something in the lottery. He hadn't hit the jackpot but he took home about 5K for hitting 4 out of the 5 numbers needed to win. Not to shabby for a days work.

I have been thinking about the lottery a bunch this last week only because the Powerball jackpot is now up in the neighborhood of 175 Million. I have drop a couple of bucks this past week and actually took home a few bucks for hitting the Powerball number and nothing else, paid out a whopping $3 so I am down $2 for the week. I guess sometimes playing low level poker online can be like playing the numbers from your local variety store. That what it has felt like for the month so far. I started of with dedicating $4 to playing Pot limit Omaha in the beginning of the year. I had been playing O8 for a couple of months and was getting burned to may times and gave back about half of what I had won over those months. So inspired by Chris Frueguson's zero dollars to 10K story I decided to give it a try. I wasn't going to be patient enough to play the free rolls to start building a bankroll. I decide to start with the minimum buy in at the .05/.10 table and see where I could go with that. Well a month and a half later I haven't had to rebuy and I have turned that $4 into about $70. It was up around $100 but the first three day of this month haven't been to kind to me. I know it is variance and I can't have all of my redraws hit every time and it is low level loosey goosey kind of play. I haven't decide if I am being to tight or if I should loosen up my standards a bit. I have been shock at what some people are playing but for the most part I'm usually right about where I stand and when all the money is in the pot I haven't been all that shocked about what they are turning over. But man I have seen some crazy hands. My favorite was one of my own I raised all in with AATJ double suited and ended up winning not with the Aces holding up but with Quad tens. I have also be giving and receiving almost equal numbers of suckouts. I know it's a game of redraws but some times I think I am going to have a heart attack as the cards come down. I don't know if I will ever be ready to play this game live but it has be fun and frustrating all at the same time. I will continue to play it for as long I feel I am running reasonably good at it and still having fun playing it. Isn't that the truth about anything anyway.

On a side note I am really craving some live action so I think I need to play hooky from work soon and get my ass up to Foxwoods for some real donkalicus $2/4 hold'em and see if I can satellite into the next WPT event that is coming up the end of this month.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Happy Leap Day

You get an extra day every four years and how do we spend it? I am going to go out with my wife and munchkin for dinner to celebrate our legal wedding anniversary. Legal you say, what do you mean? My wife and I consider our wedding day to be the last day of July 1999 we had a pig roast and pool party and let everyone that we love and care for know what our intentions were towards each other, but we didn't make it legal. It was a Handfasting and if you know what that is then I won't explain, if you don't, then that is for another post. It was on our honeymoon in the U.S.V.I. that we pick the date of February 29, 2000 to let the state know that we were a couple. The appeal of the date was that 2/29/00 only comes around every 400 years. Normally century marks are not leap years for some reason that I can't explain. So we got a friend who was also a Justice of the Peace and went to a Irish pub, ad libbed a service of I dos, drank copious amounts of Guinness and accepted the fact that we could now file a joint tax return.

Four years later on our "1st" year anniversary my wife was three days from her due date to giving birth to our munchkin. Well, she didn't come until almost two weeks later, but we had a nice dinner and prepared for how our lives would change very soon.

So even though we have actually have been married for 8 years we will always do something special every four years to mark this occasion. This extra day is a gift and you should all do something outside the box or special because you only get an extra 24 four hours every four years. We are going to introduce our nearly 4 year old daughter to the simple pleasure that is Japanese Hibachi and toast our 2nd anniversary for the second time. What will you do?

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Fidel Castro Resigns...

... and the only thing I want to know now is when can I get Cuban cigars without traveling to a foreign country? I guess that embargo finally worked, it only took 40 some odd years but we broke him.

I started smoking cigars back in 1997 just before the craze hit and I was always happy with a good Dominican or Honduran cigar and just dream of the day I would taste a Cuban. A buddy of mine smuggled some back from the Bahamas, a couple of Montecristo Tubos, and holy crap were they good. They were more than likely the best things I have ever put in my mouth. The flavor and the quality of smoke just beat anything I had ever smoked before. It then became my new mission in life to get my hand on as many as I could. It wasn't until a couple years later when my wife and I made a trip to St. Martin that I would have another Cuban. We found this little liquor/cigar store on the French side in Marigot that was run by a crazy, 5 foot tall Cuban guy named Jackie. He told us, repeatedly, that everyone else on the island that sold Cuban cigars were full of bullshit and if I paid more than $6 for one I was buying bullshit. Jackie also told us that he was the only one on the island that had the inside track on Cubans because once a year he would pay homage to the head tobacco grower in Cuban, who by the way didn't take any bullshit even from Castro himself, by bringing him a wheel of Dutch Cheese. I guess maybe the Dutch thought they could break communism but refusing to export cheese to despots. I bought a bunch off him and he was right the others were bullshit. I have been back to the island a few times since then but the store was close and his website was no more but I still would risk buying them from someone else and it is always one of my highlights of our trips to the Caribbean.

Needless to say I hope that Castro's brother brings in some democratic reforms not just for the people of Cuba but for the cigar loving population of America who is tried of circumventing a stupid law.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Poker not So Resolved

I have been thinking about this for more then I should have and I have only come up with one simple thing; I resolve in '08 to have more of a bankroll at the start of '09 then I did at the end of '07. Simple, no fuss no muss. How I do that is another story and I am stilling trying to resolve what I will do to get there. Do I play more Limit Hold'em or O/8 or do I switch to PLO or Stud. I have been mixing it up with PLO and I have to say I am trying to have the stomach for the ups and down, but the way O/8 had been treating me the last couple of weeks of last year anything is better. I will just play smart and get in in with the best of it and hope variance doesn't rear its ugly head and spank be stupid.

I have been giving work and life a whole bunch of thought these days and the ground work is being laid down. It will be exciting once I get there. I haven't written as much as I would like to but finding my voice both on paper and in poker is ultimately the highest goal I would like to achieve this year. Clear out the cobwebs, quiet the monkey brain and become one with myself and the rest will take care of itself.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Life Resolve

With the new year now into its third day I have thought about what I resolve to get accomplished in my personal life. The Munchkin is on the verge of her 4th birthday and she has been the joy of my life and could not imagine my place in this world without her being a part of it. I have made some sacrifices in my professional life so I could spend as much time as possible with her during these first few years of her life. I plan to continue to be that positive influence in her life. This really isn't a new resolution because it has always been my plan all along but I think it is important to reaffirm it every once in awhile.

I also resolve to get in touch with some old friends that I haven't had much contact with in far to long. Even though having a child does change that it really is only an excuse. I miss socializing with friends. I have never been one to be set in my ways but that is what has happened because that is the nature of being a parent. I just have to make the effort to reach out and initiate the action. Even if it is just have someone over for coffee that is more then I have been doing for far too long.

In my marriage I would just like to get more alone time with my wife. We tend to be running in so many different directions, and for good reason, that we just don't get to be a couple instead of a parental unit enough.

Also I resolve to take more pictures, which may seem ironic since I fashion myself as a amateur photography with professional aspirations. I just need to make the camera an extension of me.

Mostly I resolve to just make the time to do what is really important in life as oppose to just waiting for it to happen.

Next post I'll make my poker resolution but I have a feeling it will be a reiteration of these last two post as it should be since the game tends to be a mirror of your life.