Life, Completely Rigged Since 4,000,000,000BCE

Well I haven't updated this thing in ages, mostly due to lack of time, energy, and desire. When I stared this blog, I was definitely more into poker than I was during the month of July. My worst fear was realized during that month (apart from another jump up to 1/2, causing me to have another blow-up), after finally getting back to even I lost a bit of the direction in my poker career. I actually cut back my play a lot during the month of July, to about 2/3 of what it was in June. A lot of that had to do with the fact I went on a two week "stay-cation," but I also didn't FEEL like playing as much poker. It didn't help that my BR didn't seem to grow as quickly as it did in June, and I was stuck pretty much treading water for the better part of the month. May I'm deluding myself but when you feel like you should be making a lot more progress than you are, it really starts to wear on you, especially when you hear all these stories about people going from 100 to $20k in two weeks (granted the majority of those stories end with them being broke in a shorter amount of time than it took to build the $20k). Even Chris Ferguson, whom I've modeled my BR management after, went on a sick 7k run from 2.5k to 9.5k in about 10 days (see the graph here http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/chris-ferguson-challenge). Not saying I'm as good as he is, but it would definitely be nice to at least have a 3k run in ten days or something.

While my poker has been too blah to be rigged, my life certainly is not. First of all, let me get into this "stay-cation" business. The Ms. and I had a fight during spring break over how long our vacation should be. She wanted to spend all 9 or 10 days in DR or Cancun, or wherever, which is way too expensive for a part-time totem pole base, part-time degenerate gambler, part-time student who pays at least 50% of his tuition, to do. If it wasn't better for my career I probably would do was she does an be a waiter. I'm sure it sucks in other parts of the country, but here in NYC it's one of the greatest jobs for college students, as you can make some serious money at it. On top of that, I hate the beach. It could be the fact that I am, as my drunken aunt once said, "butt-white." Or it could be that I don't tan at all. Or it could be that I can't sit still for hours like most people do at the beach (hence why I love multi-tabling). It either case, not only is it not affordable for me, it wouldn't be worth the money even if it was. So we didn't take a vacation at all then. So come summer we decided to finally take our vacation, but since we still hadn't resolved our issues, we decided to have a "stay-cation" instead. There were some good days, like the day I drank a liter of Soju at a karaoke bar, and the day we went to Six Flags, but other than that we didn't do a whole lot. It was actually a very appropriate vacation for our relationship, definitely not bad, but nothing particularly spectacular either.

That doesn't mean I was without a tropical vacation this year though. My family has what just might be the most convenient birthday schedule ever. My sister and I are born on the same day (we aren't twins), my dad the day before, and my mom five days after. My mom is also turning 60 this year, so to celebrate, she wants to do a family vacation, something we haven't done for 9 years, mostly because after that my family has made a conscious effort to avoid each other. I won't get into the pre-trip drama, except to say that my sister is completely bonkers, and because the trip it self has plenty of it's own drama. First of all let me state for the record that unlike DR, Puerto Rico, is not a cheap vacation. Things ARE cheaper there, unless it's an establishment largely dealing with tourists, at which point it's as expensive if not more than NYC. The hotel we stayed at had a casino, which I though would be fun, but unfortunately there was no poker =(. I made an attempt at playing Blackjack instead, and entered a game which I feel was probably on the coldest shoe ever, but very well might have been rigged. The other table seemed fine, but this one was ridiculous. I sat with $160 and was broke in 15 hands, betting $10 a hand until the last two, where I bet my green chips. I won two hands, I pushed two, and I lost 11. What really made me question whether or not the table was rigged was that the dealer NEVER busted. There were plenty of times the dealer held a 15 or 16, but still no busts. It was unreal. My last two hands were typical of the night. I stayed on a 16 with dealer showing a 5, dealer made 18 and I lost. Last hand, I start with 20, dealer showing a 6. His bottom card was a 4 and he hits an ace, making me busto. That happened of the first night of our trip, and needless to say any plans I had to spend at the casino were pretty much toast.

The second night went better. After having some more issues with my sister, and me trying to overcome the fact that I had slept through most of the day, we went out that night for dinner and we actually started to have a good time. After dinner, my dad was determined to prove to me that the casino wasn't rigged, and that I just sucked at blackjack, but we decided we'd be better off checking out the casino at the Ritz-Carlton instead. We were staking out the Blackjack tables, when across the room the saw a sight that actually made me tear a little, A POKER TABLE!!!!. I saw it was a 2/5 game a sat down immediately. Of course I was so excited at seeing the table, I forgot to actually ask what the betting structure was, and was quite embarrassed when I made a 5x raise on a guy's min-bet, only to learn we were playing limit!! Oh well that was only a minor set back, and it sure made me look like a donk to the rest of the table. The play at that table was horrendous, and I was licking my chops thinking about how I could clean up on them. Unfortunately I started off on the wrong foot and lost about $80 vs a really oddly played AK (girl flopped two pair, and NEVER raised in the had even though there weren't any flushes or straights on the board), and some grandma sucking out with a gutshot when I held KK. The girls had gone off to play slots, and apparently got bored of it pretty quick (I don't get how slots are fun in the first place) and decided to walk the two blocks back to the hotel. About 15 minutes into my poker game, I get a call from my sister saying that my mom fell down and dislocated her elbow on the way back to the hotel. In shock I did the only thing I could do down $80 and not really sure what to do, pray the next hand was good and push it hard and then walk away. I ended up with 77 in LP, which I ended up raising PF, getting 4 callers, and thankfully getting a 46T rainbow board. I don't really remember what happened after that but I remember betting/raising the whole hand, and some how won at showdown without improving, even though overs fell on the turn and river. I finished down only about $25 dollars.

I ran down the street to find her, and when I did she was sitting of the floor holding her arm. My sister thinking quickly had reset her elbow and we were waiting for the paramedics to show. As it turns out, her elbow wasn't dislocated, her upper arm was actually broken and displaced. In addition to that she had a second fracture on the same bone. We were told it would require surgery to set the bone. However, given the status of Puerto Rico's healthcare system, my mom felt she would be better off leaving a day early and getting treatment in New York. So instead of spending sunday in the rain forest like we had planned, my mom got up at 10 am to try and catch a 12:45 flight back to New York. Jetblue, being the customer service free airline that they are, refused to make an exception for my mom and would have charged her and my dad $300 extra each to fly back a day early. Thankfully, my mom was a flight attendant for American Airlines, and could fly for free if she needed two. The catch is, and this is the reason we flew Jetblue, is you have to go stand-by and aren't guaranteed a seat. However we checked the flight loads the night before, and it seemed like they would have no trouble getting home. Of course, because life is rigged, that wasn't the case. American Airlines cancelled their first our flights that morning for some reason that we still aren't quite clear on, and all the flights which WERE open, were now full. Also, my mom wasn't bumped up to the top of the stand-by list, even with her broken arm, which got all of us really pissed off of course. After being stuck in the airport for 7 hours and missing the last flight by ONE seat. she had to return to the hotel and wait to travel on Monday.

Meanwhile, my sister and I spent all of Sunday touring the various police stations, which incidentally, don't really seem to have any cops who are fluent in english, to try and get the police report of the accident. My sister speaks decent spanish, but not really enough to deal with the police. Our first stop was the local police station. Nothing makes you feel safer than to know the closet precinct consists of two trailers. Unfortunately as it turns out there are local police in the area, and since local police are probably fairly inept, special state police who patrol the tourist zones. Of course, it was the state police who were the ones who stopped. The officer in the trailers, basically told us to walk down the street until he cam to a certain restaurant, and turn left to find the state police. We leave and start walking down the street, only to realize we have no clue as per how far this place actually is. We stop in a local store to ask them how far it is, and we are delighted to hear that it's only a 5-10 minute DRIVE!!! We walk about half a block to a hotel, and ask the concierge desk if they would be kind enough for them to call us a cab (at the very least everyone in Puerto Rico was very nice), and they were. The cab driver takes us to the precinct for the state police, where of course we find out, we're not at the right place yet either. It turns out the driver took us to the precinct for the wrong area, but we wouldn't have been able to get the copy that day anyway because it was sunday. We get back to our hotel, out about $40 in cab fare, and not really any closer to getting the report. It was about that time we got the news that my parents were going to be getting on any of the flights and would be spending the night back at the hotel, of course with my mom's arm still only in a sling and not properly set. Even that being simple apparently was too much to ask for. We had checked my parents out of their room, thinking that they were going to get home. The hotel had no problem giving us the room back, but we had booked the room using Expedia, and the hotel couldn't reinstate the reservation without a fax from Expedia, otherwise they would be forced to double bill us for the room (and Expedia would have to refund the portion we paid them). After spending an hour attempting the contact them, we got though to someone who said they would gladly fax the paper work to the hotel. Of course, they never did, and rather than risk getting stuck paying for the room twice, we all jammed into the room my sister and I had.

Jetblue also has made it's way into my Chewbacca defense. While is costs $300 per ticket to change a reservation to a different day, to change the tickets to a different time on the SAME DAY you are traveling only costs $25, IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!!!! So my mom and dad woke up at 3:45 to catch the 6am flight back to New York. This time they got home without a hitch, and made it to the hospital for a 12:15 appointment with an orthopedist. Keeping in line with the rest of the fiasco, the doctor was 2 hours late due to an emergency. We did get good news out of it though, the second fracture wasn't significant enough to require a plate, and the bones could be set normally without surgery. Meanwhile, My sister an I went to the other precinct where we were told we could get the report. I'll spare you the majority of the details, but as I'm sure you can guess, we couldn't get the report there either. Some garbage about how it takes 15 days to get an official stamped copy, and making a photocopy of the original is illegal. *sigh* Another waste of $20 in cab fare. Determined not to let the vacation be a total wash, we did FINALLY get to the beach for about 40 minutes before we had to get ready for our flight, which was fine with me, because that's about as much of the beach as I can handle anyway.

The week since hasn't been much more fun either. My mom is still in a lot of pain, and my sister and I are getting a preview of what it's going to be like when my parents get even older and we have to take care of them. I still have my Poker blahs, and I have been changing up my games a little to get things going again. Thursday night I tried playing two MTT's. I went busto in both before the break and remember why I stopped playing them. I've also started playing shorthanded tables, and I can kinda see why everyone likes them more. I'm up from playing on them so far, and it definitely suites my play more, since now I can raise a lot of the hand I was generally forced to limp or over limp like crazy before. My VP$IP isn't all that different from 9-max but my PFR% is up near 20 now. At least I think it is, I'm still waiting for either Crossover to work with PT, or for Hold em' Manager to finally be Mono compatible. The tracking program I do have, Mac Poker Pro, is a real piece of shit and worthless. I'm really close to installing the HE Manager beta at work...

To give you all an update on my BR situation, the last 6 weeks wasn't a complete waste. My BR is currently a little over $2,900, I made some decent money staking a friend of mine several times in the 14k 6-max DSMTT at 11pm (dude is a cashing machine in that tournament, but needs some work on his late game to actually final table the damn thing), and I cashed out $550 in Rakeback. As stated in a few of my previous posts, I didn't like that I had invested $2,000 of my own money to get my roll going, and I decided that rather than handicap my roll by withdrawing profits, I'd just withdraw my RB until my roll is 100% profit. I'm still hopeful I can hit my goal of $8k by the end of the year, and try to use poker as my source of income while I am studying abroad in China in the spring.