Geocaching is fun!

Ok, so I have actually been playing quite a bit of poker lately but will get into that another time. I plan on using this blog more now and once I figure it out will link it onto my twitter page.... http://twitter.com/DonJPoker

A lot has happened in the past year...Some Good and some not so good. I have been on layoff now for just over one year. While some might think this is a disaster and if you read my blog while this was happening you would see I did too...in fact, while difficult monetarily, this has actually been a great year for me in a lot of ways as a person. I've been able to step back from work, work, work and focus on my family and especially my son. To be able to spend this past year with him at the age of 3-4 has been a true gift.

A few years ago I had a dream about using GPS to set up scavanger hunts in the forest. When I looked this up on the internet I was quickly diverted to geocaching.com and signed up..It turns out lots of others had this dream too!....and then promply forgot about it....until this past fall when having so much free time on my hands the idea came to me again. I asked for and received a GPS unit as a Christmas present. Within a few days of the New Year I visited my first geocache site. With several thousand in the area I have no shortage of caches to visit.

I have a real hobby!! Yeah me! (Other than poker of course ;))

As my layoff may be coming to an end soon, I am beginning to look at going back to work with disappointment and a bit of sadness as I know how much I will be missing out on with Christopher. Taking him to events and geocache outings has been a super bonding experience. Somehow I hope to find a way to work from home and leave the mill behind me but know that for the time being I will most likely return to work there.

Well, this has been a bit of a scatterbrained post. I have a lot on my mind but do not want to prattle on much right now.

2010 Blogger Championship

I'm not a big fan of this tourney but I am a big fan of Pokerstars and I am going to enter the Pokerstars blogger Championship this year. I will probably play one or two events, time allowing. My feeling is that Pokerstars kind of cheaps out on this tourney considering all of the advertising they get out of it.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! PokerStars.com is the home of Free Online Poker Games, bloggers can play for free in the exclusive WBCOOP tournament, register here to play: WBCOOP

Registration code: 850367

I've been playing quite a few sit and gos recently with varied success. I am slowly upping my volume and hopefully will be up to steam soon. I continue to feel better about life in general even though I do not have enough money flowing in.

I will blog in the future about a great new hobby I have picked up over the new year....geocaching and how it is changing my life for the better.

Cheers Don.

No Longer Staked

It only lasted about a month, and time will tell if it helped me or not. I've been having quite a bit of trouble getting any volume in this week and decided I would not continue on being backed. So it lasted about 6 weeks and I ended up several hundred, nearly half going to my backer. I never took a good shot at playing the stakes where I wanted to take a shot at with my backer and ultimately I think that doomed the deal. Although I did not have a problem proving myself at lower limits the whole point was to push forward and that never happened. Ultimately that was my own fault and we were probably going to get there soon...but my schedule with the holidays and probably return to work for a couple of weeks during the next month made it increasingly clear that I just don't have the time to make it happen. Because of that my volume dropped right off this week in anticipation of dropping the backing deal and not wanting to get into a make up situation.

I will continue on and play sit and gos but also have the freedom to play other tournies and cash games again as I see fit. Hopefully I will have learned some discipline from the past weeks exercise. It was difficult to give over my br decisions to someone else after doing it myself for over 6 years.

With Christmas coming there should be some good movies to get too over the next couple months. At least after I've been dragged to the obligatory Twilight movie....

The big one that I'm looking forward too is Avatar. I'm hoping it is a spectacular experience of a movie. If it does not live up to the hype I will be very disappointed.

Running mad and watching history!

As in crazy! There is a point in a session where you get pissed off at how badly you are running...like tonight and sometimes this can lead to tilt...so usually it is best to quit the session at that point. But tonight I ran so badly I got thru the anger point into incredulous laughter at the number of suckouts one after another I took. Like seriously I'm laughing pretty hard...like holy fuck this is amazing!! Runner, runner straights, river sets, backdoor flushes...everything is getting there for the villains tonight! So the decision to quit tonight was incredibly easy...I'm not going to win tonight so best be getting some sleep.

Yesterday, I played a few $16x18's. I busted in all of them and never felt very comfortable with the structure. It really does play quite a bit differently than the 45's and I will need to make a couple of adjustments. Tonight I was back in the $12x45's for like I said a fairly short session of madness.

I also was able to witness some amazing high stakes play on Full Tilt today. As many of you know there is a new kid on the block Isildur1 and he has quickly become a legend taking millions off of Tom 'Durrrr" Dwan in only a week. Unheard of action as Isildur has been 6 tabling multiple opponents with millons on the table playing 500/1000 NLH and PLO. Today was perhaps the climax as Isildur multitabled Patrick Antonius and Phil Ivey simultaneously. 4 Tabling Patrick and 2 tables with Ivey who refuses to play more. By the end of the day Isi was down over 2 million dollars. Patrick had over 2 million on one table alone and had won an amazing 1.35 million on one hand on a day that saw dozens of $500000+ pots. Unreal how much money being thrown around without any regard for its worth. Amazing degeneracy and amazing nerves.

Busy, stressful, ultimately successful month

Well, maybe not that busy. In fact by most peoples standards I was downright near comatose! Stressful is true. Midway through the month I was checking my bank account expecting to see my gov't monies from my new claim there.....NOT THERE. Looked again and actually they had shipped my cheque but only 15% the amount I was expecting! Needless to say, panic ensued and a few phone calls later I was not very assured about the prospect of being reimbursed at the proper rate. I was caught in a technical and bureaucratic mess created by my former employers inability to fill out my paperwork properly! It took a week and quite a bit of pleading and arguing my case before everyone saw and sorted out the error. All is now good on that front for some time.

On the poker front, I am doing well...I played one week of the 6.50s x45s to help prove myself to my backer; (who seems like a good guy albeit maybe a bit quiet at times when I want some feedback).... Over 210 s@gs I had about a 16% ROI. I'm still proving out at 12x45's and with very similar results....356 games played with a 15% ROI. My volume is still not where I want it to be at only about 20 sit and gos/day. I expect to move up soon to either $16x18's or $27x45's. The reason to go to the 18 mans is about volume. They just go off much more frequently than the 45's and as I move higher that could become a problem. So, I want to get some experience at this level now rather than take a step back later.

Some people close to me have wondered why I have bothered being backed when I have the bankroll for the stakes I'm playing right now. My answer is that it is for mental reasons. It is true I could do this without backing. But mentally to keep on track and not get sidetracked I have found this experiment really worthwhile. I can play without worry and my inner br nit has been kept mostly at bay. And ultimately I want to play outside my own br in the near future...this gives me the confidence that I will be moving up soon without the worries of bankroll. I am also concerned I may have to at some point raid my bankroll for real life at some point again soon before it is suitably built up. Having backing now alleviates a lot of that pressure.

I listened to most of the live audiocast of the WSOP ME final table earlier this month. It was a crazy final table and the bad beats were more plentiful than expected. Ultimately those beats and coolers decided the chamipionship which was disappointing from that perspective, but from an entertainment point of view it made for great drama. While Moon played some questionable poker to get to heads up and at one point was reported to be nodding off at the final table....I thought he was surprisingly good against the HU specialist Cada until the end when he made a very questionable call with QJs. The funny thing is that he was correct in his assessment that Cada had a smaller pair, but flipping for $3 million dollars at that point was not a good choice.

Staked and Ready

So I did manage to find a backer to stake me in sit and gos. I am starting out at 6.50's x 45 man. I had a decent first day even though I was really tired. One win and 4 cashes out of 16 played and 6 final tables. So I was going deep quite often and then not making it count. That happened today too except I was not as successful and took a loss. Should have broken even but I finished 6th in my two cashes. Bah.

Anyway I feel like shit. My chest is super tight. Hopefully not coming down with something.

Looking forward to playing quite a bit tomorrow and need to rest.

A lot has happened in a year!

Yes, I am back.

Well, I did lose my job in March 2009. I am on EI and there is the possibility to return. Before I lost my job I was bounced around until I was stationed in the best job I had at the mill...in the lab as a technician. Before the layoff I was in line for an apprenticeship.

Anyway it is has been 6 months and I have worked just 2 days in that time. I have spent most of that time helping Lisa who has a frozen shoulder and doing most of the work around the house. But best of all I have had a lot of time to spend with Christopher. I have had an opportunity to watch him at the best of ages 3-4.

My poker has really struggled this past year. Ever since the trouble with work began my game I have basically been a breakeven player. My record keeping has broken down and I am just not the same person that I was two years ago. It is very unfortunate because I was really cruising for a long time there and if I had so much freetime back then I would have been able to play professionally.

I feel better mentally than I have in a long time though. Like I am on a mental upswing. I have put out a few feelers for getting a staking deal. We will see. I don't really have a lot of references but my results are good. I feel a backer will help me regain some of the mental focus I require to start playing higher volumes and higher stakes as I continue to transition into sit and gos. I know I have some nasty leaks so a backer might be able to help plug some of them as well. We will see but I think it is a good direction for me at this time. If I am to get serious about poker again this should be a good step in that direction.

It has been over a year since my last post but I suspect I will start posting again with more volume as I continue to look to the future and not the past....

Oh and Happy Birthday to me!!