One more day of 2010 grinding!

2010-12-22

Sup guys. Despite a rough Monday I have been really amped to punch out some more results and close the year on a strong note; this week I've won the Stars 16.50/360 cap, 2nd UB 20r, 3rd UB 50 cubed, 3rd Stars 5r and 5th UB 7k for a 3k turnaround.

The Stars 5r was a little disappointing, it is a monstrous field and I was chipleader with more than twice second with about 600 out, and remained 1st or 2nd in chips until 50 left which is a tough feat! I made the FT 2/9 with 150bb but got whalloped four handed when someone flatted AJo OOP in a fourbet pot when I had KK and flopped Axx. I got to showdown cheaply but that put me back to 35bb and I ran bad from there, gg.

I've been experimenting (again!) with setup changes, and have lately been playing with two stacks each for FTP and Stars. Every time I double through and get more than 30bb in the midgame, I throw the table into the second stack so I remember to keep on the front foot rather than folding marginal hands (which I would do more often <30bb). I find this has helped a ton with maintaining stacks, keeping my VPIP up despite playing tons of tables and putting more of my focus on specific tables since I can autopilot <30bb tables relatively easily.

We've also been watching some documentaries lately; last night we sat through Fahrenheit 9/11 (which I'd already seen) and The Cove. Obviously documentaries are pretty biased but if the capitalism-gone-wrong story in Fahrenheit didn't make me angry enough, The Cove certainly did.

The Cove is about dolphin killings in Japan and there is the most disturbing 2-3 minute scene in it, seriously I was close to tears The issue is really close to my heart as someone who loves surfing and feels a real affinity with the ocean; I have ridden waves with dolphins before in WA and think they are the most amazing creatures. I'm not sure if you remember from a past blog, I had dinner with a mate who works in International Law in Canberra...he gave me the lowdown on the legal issues surrounding the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and Japan's whaling industry. As far as I understand it, from a raw legal perspective the opponents to Japanese whaling actually do not have that strong a founding for their case, however from an ocean conservation point of view I really hope the screws are tightened even further. If this is something you are passionate about too, the documentary is worth watching, and if you want to do more about it, here is a good place to start.

And yes, as the title suggests, tomorrow is my last planned grind session for 2010..after which I'll be ruling off the books and then forgetting about poker for the rest of the year. I'll probably upload some graphs/stats tomorrow night and some goals for next year.