Jeremy Hotz

We went to see Jeremy Hotz Just for Laughs Tour show last night. It was a good night out and we had fun. The opening act sounded alot like a David Spade clone to me. He was pretty funny. Jeremy was pretty much as I expected. Lots of swearing and laughing at himself. I thought he was pretty good. Lisa I think was crying at one point she laughed so much! He had some really good material on animals and the human condition and some clunker stuff. He never had a real bomb moment so that was good. I give him a B. We had fun. Before the show we dropped the boy off at Grannys. It was her birthday and they had lots of fun. He didn't miss us at all! Hit Swans before the show for a pint and that was good. They were out of what I ordered so I asked for something that tasted like Kilkenny. Good trick me! Bartender started pouring tasters for me!! Awesome. He had a lineup in front of me before I knew it! Good tip for him. So I ended up with my pint. Another half pint Lisa's and another pint in tasters. GG me! Boy, good thing we had tickets for the show already because we might have been cabbing it home.

On a sad note what is up with Victoria. The city is really getting overun by drug addicts. There are some real zombies walking around. I'm not kidding. There was one young guy, stumbling around outside the pub for ages like a bloody zombie. Seriously, we need to stop enabling this tragedy and put these people into institutions to clean them up. It is a real epidemic. This whole idea of housing them, exchanging needles on the street and this Rev. Tysick group of enablers is a joke. Some of these people are gone and have to be let go of because they are like drowning swimmers pulling more and more poor souls down with them....sorry but its just the truth. These cheap, lab drugs are a fucking plague!

Seriously, can this just stop now!!

A lot of nonsense has happened since my last post and I just cannot be bothered to follow up on it tonight.

I am too busy running horridly. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse it did. I have hardly played over the past 2 weeks but when I have it has been atrocious. Because I haven't been playing I failed to top up my cash account via fpp conversions and now that it is end of the quarter the Sunday million has a $1k buyin and the fpp satellites don't end up running for it all week. That combined with my downswing meant I was playing short this week unless I took a bonus payout which I refuse to do at this point. Anyway, I was short and this is a bad for my confidence, and considering how low it is right now that is a bad combo. Well, I am playing several tables and not much happens. Played a couple of good pots but am down a touch. Get sent all in by a small stacker preflop while holding KK. He has AQ. I flop set....anyway it wasn't a big pot but you already know he gets there for broadway. Few hands later in a WSOP Step 1 replay I'm in I get dealt KK. Get it allin vs 22 preflop....river 2. Very similar to the way I busted in the 50K freeroll on Saturday early on. OMG OMG. If I were getting some hands going my way occasionally it would even out but that has just not been happening. Few hands later I call a raise in the cutoff with 33. BB also called. 356 flop 2 hearts. OH bloody hell, yeah BB has 55 we get it allin...ffs. can anything go right. Decide to play Stud8 and Omaha8. Hopefully a change will help. Not much happening and reach for my big tall glass of OJ my wife graciously provided me moments before.....

I was already in full baby scream OH NO! as it tips directly over top of my Power Cords and the back of the Computer Case, all over the wall and playpen. GG me. Shut down. Fucking Orange Juice all over everything. Fuck me!!

OH and the bloody Canucks blew a 3rd period lead to the Flames. WTF was that!!!

Sigh....

Tomorrow night I won't be playing until late if at all. We have ickets for Just for Laughs comedian Jeremy Hotz at the MacPherson. One of my favorite standups on the show so I am really looking forward to it. I will try to review the show tomorrow.

Downswinging and a few words for the wise

I am definately continuing to downswing now. At least it feels like it. Ran KK into AA twice tonite. Then proceeded to run Top set QQ into A2 on a 345Q board. He called a strong preflop raise with A2 flopped it then I perhaps foolishly?? called his postflop raise and hit my top set.... Allin there and I blanked the river....$200 pot there. Another $150 lost on the KK hands. Ran about even most of the rest of the night. Then played some 3/6Triple Draw to finish up when I spotted a guy who is a huge Triple Draw fish/winner/suckout artist who loves to cap the betting on every street drawing 3/4/5 at a time. "Fun2Draw1" lives up to his name and the guy was drawing many against me and hitting 3 hands in a row with heavy betting on every street as I was trying to outdraw the master. Considering Iwas a favorite every hand it was pretty sick. He was finishing up for the night and left. I stuck around and ran up my stack on my table image when I ran my first draw made #3 low 76532 into a drawing #2 which caught on the 2nd draw 76432 for a big pot $138. Doh....thats running bad folks.

A few words to those who criticize the fact I play poker for profit and not necessarily for just fun. Take a look in your own mirror. Do your vices pay for your mortgage bills every month? How much time do you all spend on your hobbies and or vices? I put in about 1 hour and 45 minutes a day to poker... Is that too much? Thats less than the time to watch a movie on TV. We all have them. If mine is poker then so be it. I would rather play this game than do drugs, drink, watch TV. I usually only play this game after my family has gone to bed at night and on Saturdayafternoons when I am freerolling for a chance at thousands of dollars.

I enjoy the game. I take it very seriously and I am extremely careful to safeguard against losses. I started playing in 2003 on a $250 investment. I currently earn over $1000/month just in rakeback. When I realized my days of playing field hockey and cricket were for the most part done, poker helped fill a competitive void in my life. In fact as a competitive endeavour goes, I have never had success like this on an individual level before in my life. I am not a great poker player. But I am among a group of people who have enough 'talent' to play poker profitably and that gives me a good deal of personal satisfaction. I have not fluked my way to over $20K in winnings playing low stakes poker.

The past year has seen my game take strong strides to increasing profitability and I know that I also face increasing criticism for what is perceived to be long hours of play. It just simply is not true and I want that record set straight. I play fewer hours in 2008 than I did when I started playing in 2003. I do however play many more hands of poker than I did in 2003 because I play many more tables now. I play for slightly higher stakes than I did then but I am still considered a small stakes player. My hand volume makes up for my talent level. I have the ability to make multiple decisions very quickly and that volume is the basis of my profitabilty. This year I plan to increase that volume even further while also decreasing the amount of actual time I play poker.

But I will leave the plans for that for a future post. I will also address the issue of addiction and my opinions on that. Stay tuned...

I wish all of you the very best in whatever you choose to do with your time. With your life. I enjoy poker as my chosen pasttime. I would hope that those who know me respect that. But again I will address that in the future.

Love all. Donald.

Blah Poker

Well, its been a tough month for poker. I have been unmotivated to play and have been forcing myself to play just enough to fall short of the pace I want to be on as far as number of hands played. It has been about a month of up and down poker with big momentum swings and not much movement up or down in the end. I know being tired and sick has contributed. But more likely my poorish play at times is a result of a hangover from what was a breakout month for me in January. I am trying to force it at times and that is fatal in poker. Sometimes calling down in spite of a good read that says don't do it. Sometimes not carrying through at the right time. And sometimes just not getting enough cards at the right time. I thought I played fairly well tonite and ended up with a loss. It could have been worse as I was able to smell out AA while holding KK and was able to keep the hand down to a $30 pot. It definately could have been worse.

Hopefully I am feeling better tomorrow as I have a wicked head cold. Will play some tomorrow but probably not a ton. We'll see. Happy Paddys Day this week! Looking forward to a couple sips of Guinness...

Stomping Stud8

The night of the 28th I was so exhausted I went to bed early. No poker, no TV, no hanky panky, no playing with the boy(well a little bit), nothing. Got up for work at 4am and receive email from pokerstars that the 29th is a 24 hour double fpp promo day. Swear a bit at the lateness of the warning since there was none. PS. Some of us have a day job!! Got home around 6:30 and only 2 hours left of the promo. Decided there were better things to do so I ended up not getting any bonus fpps!! Well, that leaves me a bit annoyed so when I finally did settle down to play, after everyone else had hit the sack, I figured I would do less damage playing Stud8 unless I really went cold. Well, I figured right. Last night and today have been pretty good as I have been able to win over 100bb at 2/4 while 2-4 tabling. Cashed out last night and no doom switch this morning. In fact my winrate was higher today than last night. Anyway, I hate getting too excited about such short term results but it is nice to know that I can actually play 2/4 Stud8 profitably most of the time. I had been winning a couple years ago playing 1/2 and when I had tried to move up back then I completely collapsed. Not so this time at 2/4. I cannot see myself playing 1/2 Stud8 so it is nice to have the 2/4 tables as an option when things are cool over at the NLH tables. It really is good to have a safe haven like that. A place to play when things are bad. I might have to invest in pokertracker for Stud/Omaha.

As for the Canucks they have points in 9 of their last 10 games but have squandered 2 third period leads in a row only to lose in a shootout. So far the new guy Pettinger has not done anything significant. Time will tell. Kevin Bieksa back from injury has looked out of place at times and has not been doing the team any favours with his play. That said, the speedy young forwards Ryan Shannon and Mason Raymond are starting to look like legitimate 2nd liners in the future, especially Raymond. Blazing speed with good hockey sense and great patience and ability around the net.