Here’s a quick list of what’s been happening:

- Started my first full-time job at a medical IT company in Downtown LA, I officially quit last Friday(7/16/2010).

- Started an internet marketing internship last month and I can honestly say that maybe the best things in life are free.  Everything I’ve learned so far has been invaluable and I MIGHT just have found what I want to do career-wise. It actually helped me land quite a few interviews(I’m actually deciding between two companies right now) so I’m very excited.

- Started to cook.  I only make steak and chicken sandwiches right now.  But still, it’s a huge jump for me seeing as I used to be too lazy to even boil water to make instant noodles. 

- Other than that I’ve just been doing the standard workout/study stuff.  You know, all the self-improvement things that everyone is into after college.  Is it just me or productivity level skyrockets 100000% after school?  Gone are the days where I’ll sleep in til 11am and then take my first nap at 1pm

Poker Related

- Been playing poker at Commerce Casino on and off since April — I think I ended up winning 12 sessions and losing 2.

- I’ll be playing at the Million Dollar Guaranteed at Commerce this week.  It’s sort of like a mini WSOP Main Event.  They’re going to have four Day 1s and a Day 2 and Day 3.  Buy-in is $335.

After analyzing some of my hands, I realized this — just because you made the final table doesn’t mean you should just sit there and turtle for a hand.  You need to go with your reads and take shots sometimes.  There were at least two spots where I could have taken the chiplead with 6 remaining, but I decided to pass on those spots because I was too nervous about the spot I would end up finishing in.

As an example:

I was the BB with a pair of 3s and had about a 187k stack with the blinds at 10k/20k and the shortstack moved in for 97k in mid position.  There was a quick caller behind, and it was folded to me.  Normally, I would call and see a flop or even move all in to isolate…but instead, I folded.  Had I moved all in, the other caller likely would have called with his Kc Qc because he already had half his chips in, and I would’ve taken the chiplead.  Hell, even if I just called we likely would have checked it down to eliminate the shortstack.

But instead, I decided to deviate because I wanted to look for a better spot.  That ended up costing me a higher up finish.  So I guess what I am trying to get at is play the way you would play the hand most of the time, because it probably is the most efficient way to play it.  You obviously don’t wanna do that 100% of the time(because you would become too predictable), but I would say you want to make the move you make most of the time because it is probably +EV.

I ended up going out with AQ vs AK.

edit:

So I’m on the 2+2 forum reading a thread about ‘degenerate stories’, and some of them are hilarious:

i started palying 1 year ago, some relly nice guy send me 100 bucks to play, i ran to the tables i made about 1200, the next day i was in the 500 1 million guaranteed, lost it, and lost everythin in the nezt week, since the i stole my mom credit card and put 100, then 200, then 100, then 200, until i was 3000 in debt, sshe caught me, i told her i was going to pay her, but i havent. i skip classes from time to time, go to the casino, put 20 on some dozen, lose and im out, sometimes i bet on sports, i have like 100 tickts on my room, i still live with my parents, im 20 with 0 dollars to my name, im a donk at college also.

Then this one:

---

I turned 18 in February of 2006. Ever since then, my dad and I have been going to Indian casinos 3 to 4 nights a week. He is a teacher and doesn’t like the crowds on the weekends so we go on week nights, stay till about 4 or 5 AM then he goes to work on no sleep and I go to class. When we go, he plays blackjack and I play poker(I end up at the BJ tables cause of ape tilt).
We both lose a **** ton of money. We make sure to take the daily limit out of the ATM before midnight so if we lose we can take out more then. He is in debt from gambling 50k and about 15-20 of it is money he has given me. We have swongs every night of anywhere from 3k to -5k. Every casino in the area knows us by name and it’s very depressing. My girlfriend broke up with me cause of it. I have no friends. I can’t find a job because the last one I had I stole 600$ from. FML.

With all of that said, we’re going again tonight! Ship it!

The last tilt session I had, ended in my converting my FPP to a T shirt, cos after losing like $60, I figured stars had virtually taken the shirt off my back so I ordered another one.

Oh well, have to keep moving along.

Pretty funny vid I came across:

You know you’re running bad when:

- you have JJ vs QA and get it all in on a Q J 9 Q board and the river comes A.

- you have 77 vs QQ and get it all in on a 5 7 J board and the turn and river comes running jacks to counterfeit your full house.

- your pair vs lower pair all in preflops which have an 80% advantage lose more often than they usually do. 

- getting set over setted in the SCOOP events multiple times.

- your 75% advantages continually lose at critical stages in the tournament.

Been pretty amusing for me for the past couple of days, but just trying to trudge through it =)  For the first time since January, I have decided to move down in terms of my average tournament buy in — I’m moving down from $60 to $27 sit n gos for the time being.  I’ve always read about how it’s a necessity for poker players to move down — because everyone encounters a wild downswing once in awhile.  I just didn’t expect to move down so soon…oh well =) 

In other news:

- I started promoting for Visionshock SD — pretty nice + fun group of people. 

- May is gonna be a pretty fun month imo:

  - May 2nd – our next VS event. come down! It’ll be fun I promise

  - May 9th – audiotistic.  above and beyond YES.  I’m looking at the lineup right now and it looks like Talib Kweli + The Cool Kids, etc. are gonna have a hip hop room — cool.  

  - May 15th – sungod.  NERD headlining with Cool Kids, Motion City Soundtrack, etc.  blah blah

  - May 22nd – vegas

Anyway, going back to poker.  Things will turn around soon I’m sure, downswings have nothing on me =)

Will post more later.

edit: Pulled my nice finish sooner than I expected 3rd place finish for $2.1k

I’ll have some critical hands up by tomorrow hopefully…busy week.  Cya

I’ll have time to play this week after Tuesday though.

Other stuff

- Got my ps3 with Street Fighter 4, Killzone 2, Madden 09, Little Big Planet, and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.  Besides unlocking most of the chars in SF4, I didn’t have much of a chance to play the other games.

- Cool feature for my ps3: can stream all forms of media from my comp…pretty neat imo.  It also has an add visuals feature when you play mp3 files.

- Vegas next weekend for me.  Dunno if I’ll be playing poker there or not.  I don’t really like it because it detaches me from my group of friends when they go play the table games or do other stuff — It kinda makes me feel antisocial when I’m just sitting there playing.  Also, I’m being incredibly smart by going to vegas the week before my finals…

- HSII = the week after vegas = March = exciting ^_^v

I’m deep in another one right now…we’ll see how that goes.  :)

edit: Ended up finishing 7th.  Ended the tournament with a 60% advantage and a 75% advantage going down — no regrets.  This was a $109 buy in with 297 players — $1750 for 7th.  Very tough field.

If I posted some of my hand histories for these big tournaments, would you guys find it beneficial? msg me on aim if you would like that.

Also, I’m going to start taking critical hands from my tournaments and posting them up.  I’ve pretty much just been talking about keeping a positive mindset for the past month and posting my results.  I’ll take some time to analyze my hand histories more thoroughly so I can hopefully enlighten you guys.