Book & DVD Review List

So here's a list of books and DVD's that I've purchased and studied over the years that I plan on reviewing here in future posts.

Note: This list is not in a ranking order, but in the order I purchased them.

1. Winner's Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker - Ken Warren
2. Play Poker Like the Pros - Phil Hellmuth, Jr.
3. Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players - Sklansky/Malmuth
4. Winning Low Limit Hold'em - Lee Jones
5. Killer Poker - John Vorhaus
6. Super/System - Doyle Brunson
7. Poker Wisdom of a Champion - Doyle Brunson
8. Championship No Limit & Pot Limit Hold'em - Coutier/McEvoy
9. Harrington on Hold'em - Harrington/Robertie
10. Super/System 2 - Doyle Brunson
11. Ace on the River - Barry Greenstein
12. Phil Gordon's Little Green Book - Phil Gordon

For DVD's

1. Secrets of No Limit Hold'em - Howard Lederer
2. More Secrets of No Limit Hold'em - Howard Lederer
3. National Heads-up Championship - NBC

Other books I have that aren't related to poker but has the potential to help your game are...

1. Zen in the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel
2. The Method of Zen - Eugen Herrigel
   

I will also briefly go over other books that I've read through but have not bought as of yet. These include...

• Theory of Poker - Sklansky
• Poker Essays Vol. 1,2,3 - Sklansky/Malmuth
• Amarillo Slim: In a World Full of Fat People - Thomas Preston
• Caro's Book of Poker Tells - Mike Caro
• Tournament Poker for Advanced Players - Sklansky
• Small Stakes Hold'em - Miller
• The Psychology of Poker - Shoonmaker
• World Poker Tour: Making the Final Table - Eric Lindgren
• I'm All In - Lyle Berman
  

A Year in Review, New Year Resolutions, and Book Reviews

2005 has been a bit of a lackluster year as far as bankroll development and growth goes. I feel things are stabilizing out now and the upcoming year looks promising. I will soon be hired on at my work and will have my doctor bills paid off. My goal this next year is to enter at least one major tournament by winning a seat in a satellite. Also, I plan on writing a series of reviews on the books I've read aswell as some of the DVD's about poker.

A Little Tournament Play

Full Contact Poker was just getting too boring with their slow software chugging out the cards and waiting for players to complete their decisions with their bad layout. So I've been watching the action on Full Tilt Poker and have noticed that there are a lot more people playing there than when I played regularly. It's more than doubled in size. Plus the action is a lot looser, especially in the middle and micro limits. The small limits are still a bit conservative. I deposited some money and decided instead of playing cash games I'll try my skills at tournaments. I played a satellite and won a seat into a $200 +$16 $60,000 guaranteed tournament which ran today. 364 people registered for this tournament including a couple of well known pros Allen Cunningham and Aaron Bartley. They didn't do too well and placed far out of the money. I actually made in the money, but wish I could've won more. I ended up placing 25th and netting me $400. First was around $18,000 which would of been really nice to win. Anyway, now I have some money to do some last minute christmas shopping since the place I work at stiffed me on a holiday bonus. It's workplace crap like this that makes me wish I could either own my own business or be a professional poker player. The straw that breaks the camel's back will eventually happen someday. Hopefully by that time I will be ready for it and travel off on a nicer ride.

The School of Fish

I deposited some money back into my neteller account for use at a
new site backed by Daniel Negreanu, Full Contact Poker. The players
here are so unbelievably bad! I should be raking in some cash here at
this site for sure. I've been focusing a lot more on two things
recently...poker and music. I play in a few professional jazz bands in
the area which has helped my pocket book a bit. The subject of poker
has more cerebral for me than tactial since I've been on a tight
budget. Basically I've been mentally honing my strategies to
perfection. Hopefully they play out well in reality.

Turkey Day Tourney

Thanksgiving weekend was nice and relaxing for me. My whole family
got together and we basically had a really big pot luck. Everyone
brought dishes they've made so we had tons of food which was very good.
After dinner, some of us played a small $5 tournament of no limit
holdem. The money paid three places and I took second, which wasn't
bad. A few relatives of mine play online poker quite a bit. None of
them are winning players, but after seeing their playing style I can see
how a few small adjustments can turn them into winning players. My
cousin showed me a couple of websites that look like they can be pretty
useful. www.pocketfives.com and www.thepokerdb.com were two that he
told me about.
With all the poker resources that are available today, I'm surprized
that I haven't been able to turn things around yet. I'm very patient,
though. Despite still having no money to play anymore, I've been
keeping fresh by constantly studying preflop strategy and running
scenarios in my head against different types of opponents. When I make
my comeback I'll be playing in full force.

Living Life by the Week

I still have no money for poker except for the nights I play here at my house with my friends. I'm actually living on my credit card right now. I make enough money to pay bills and gas. Food and other expenses go on the card now. I'm still waiting to be hired on at my job. For two months now they've been saying "We'll get you on soon, we're getting the paperwork together" and a lot of other bullshit they can think of to tell me. My life is so stagnant right now that I measure any progress in units of weeks. Weeks seem like days to me. Time just seems to fly by. Hey, there goes another month. What have I done that's productive, anything? Nope. Ohh well. Shwoosh, another month goes by while I was reflecting back on the last month. Get my drift?

One thing that's been a nice upgrade to my weekly life is that I've been able to get back into playing music again. I attended a couple of rehearsals in Hayward with a big band. I was just subing for another musician. I rehearse with another big band here in Pleasanton. That band has some top notch musicians! I'm very pleased to be a part of that band. I've also been thinking about joining the Pleasanton Community Band to freshen up my clarinet chops. Also, thinking a bit in the future, which in all actuality is coming up pretty fast, I'd like to get in one or maybe two classes under my belt next year. I just have to figure out where and how to start back up again and in what order and a million other things. I need to get a copy of my transcripts from Columbia College and send them to a junior college around here like DVC.

My ultimate goal is to just end my slow self torture of sub-standard living through improvement. When I graduated high school back in '99, my first attempt was working. Discouragement proceeded shortly after and I switched to college. Discouragement proceeded again and I switched back to the workfield. While working, I tried to pull myself out of sub-standardness by building a career in poker. Well guess what...discouragement proceeded yet again! Now that I can't afford to quit my job and go to school full time, I'm forced to come up with a compromise. I'll have to progress through school slowly by only taking night classes and/or internet courses. You'll never see the story of my life portrayed on a movie screen. It's just not very good entertainment. In fact, it's not entertainment at all, it's reality. True reality. Nobody ever sees on TV the people that try, take risks, and fail! The internet is getting that way as well. Blogs nowadays hardly define true reality anymore. I at least try to write my blogs as true to reality as I can. Once I get things back on the right track, maybe I'll be able to live life by each and every day.

I Think the Alligator Bled to Death

   Okay, I got fed up with FullTilt Poker after constantly losing big chunks of my bankroll so I withdrew my money back into my bank account.  Then one weekend I felt like playing some live poker so I went up to the California Grand in Pacheco.  They now have one to two tables of no limit holdem with a 2-2-3 blind structure with a $3 bring in bet and a $200 max buy-in.  Let me tell you now, the way this game was going, it would've been nice to sit down with about $600.  Anyway, I bought in for $200 and after 4 hours of play, won myself $300 in profit.  Not bad!  The next weekend I went back and lost my whole bankroll in two days.  After losing a chunk of my roll at FullTilt, I didn't have that much left anyway.

   Now with my bankroll gone, I have no way to play poker on any regular schedule (not that it was too regular to begin with).  Looking back, I think if I were to do things differently, I would've saved up enough money to just play live instead of online.  The point of playing online in the first place was to build a roll so I could play live.  I've figured out that there are a lot of people trying to do the same thing I am...sit on my ass at home and make money.  Well, online it's easier for people to play tight because all they have to do is push a button all day drinking ice tea while watching reruns of Seinfeld.  They don't even have to suffer the pain of waiting for a hand to play because they've got 4 to 8 tables on their screen so that almost every other hand is a big pocket pair.

   Yeah okay, so you people might think I'm just bitter because I lose at poker.  Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I don't know.  I'm just upset that I've played and studied hard for about two years to try to at least make a suplemental income from poker and have gotten nowhere at it.  Do you realize how disappointing that is?  That's it, I'm tired of struggling to make things happen for me and then end up broke.  I've got a wardrobe of clothes that hasn't been updated in 3 or 4 years, single, no social life, and no friends.  Yeah, sure I have friends that I play poker with at my house every Saturday night, but no real personal friends I can go hang out with on weekends or something.  This is what I do...I get up, go to work, go home, fix dinner, read a book (either on poker, small business, physics, or Zen Buddhism), and go to sleep.  Rinse and repeat.  The only thing I like about weekends is the fact that I don't have to work.  The only problem is I don't have anything planned for the weekends because (1.) I don't have any friends I can hang out with, (2.) no girlfriend, (3.) I can't even think of a 3 because, I don't know, there's a lot of things, though.  I try to keep myself busy over the weekends, though, because if I'm not, then I'll get depressed.  Not that it matters because I'm depressed as it is, I just like to keep it suppressed so I don't have to deal with the real issues of my sad pathetic life.  What will it take so I can be happy and content with my life?  A girlfriend would be a nice start!  I remember the last girlfriend I had.  At that time, I was more broke than I am now, but I remember being happy and content with life.  I didn't care how much money I had, what kind of car I drove, or the kind of clothes I wore.  Everything was great, I was going to transfer over to CSU Hayward, study music, get a bachelors degree and a teaching credential, find a job at a nice school in a really cool town, bla bla bla, etc.  Then she drops me like a wet noodle and my life goes to shit.  How about that, huh?  Okay, I'm all worked up now, I'm too mad and depressed to write anymore.  Plus you are probably tired of my bitching and ranting about my sucky-ass life.  I'll spare you the rest of my problems for the time being.  I'm going to bed.

A Similarity Between Poker and Mother Nature

    Let me share with you a striking revelation I've had this past night regarding a theory about the direction of poker.  More specifically about the survivability of modern day professional poker players.

    Poker pros are most often referred to as sharks, but I like to think of them more as a land predator such as a tiger, lion or cheetah.  These predators born in their natural environment are akin to the likes of Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Barry Greenstein, Freddy Deeb, and Men Nguyen just to name a few.  These players lives fell into a series of events that led them to their career in poker where they learned the game through logic and experience.  Poker has changed quite a bit through the years and these cats were able to adapt to it.  They had to or else they die from lack of prey.  Let's take, for example, when holdem and 7-stud became legal in California.  The availability of draw and lowball games began to dry up as more people started playing stud and holdem.  Pros who only played draw or lowball would have to adapt to the newly legalized games or else their profits would dry up.  In a sense, it's like following a migrating herd to ensure a sustainability in sustenance.

    Now let me tell you that all this is just history that has proven itself in relation to the laws of nature.  What my main concern about the pros of today is that they have been raised in the wrong environment.  They have been raised in a place where the prey is abundant and plentiful and all in one concentrated geographic region.  Now remembering back from that old college or high school biology class, what happens when there is an abundance of prey?  The prey get attacked by even more predators!  In a time when there are more people playing poker than ever before, pros seem to be popping up like hotcakes!  Any time you watch ESPN or the WPT, they're always doing a bio on some new 21 year old Joe Schmoe internet pro no one has ever heard of.  This huge increase in pros poses a problem, especially in no limit holdem.  As all the dead money from all the amateur players move up the poker food chain, their cash will be depleted and will no longer be able to play as much, if at all.  The increase of predators will decrease the amount of prey and will in-turn decrease the amount of predators.

    I assume most poker pros are intelligent enough to adapt, but I think once the poker boom settles down, quite a few pros will, by nature, be forced to call it quits and go find some "real work."

Setting Aside Time to Play/Study

Finally, I got promoted at my work! I'm still a temp right now, but they will soon hire me on giving me a raise and a cash bonus. I will be able to pay off my doctor bills with my bonus (it will be a pretty hefty sum by my standards). With my finances improving, this will set aside the need for a second job. Along with my promotion, they adjusted my hours so I am no longer working 7-3:30. Instead, I am working 8-4:30. Even though it's just an hour difference, it makes all the difference! On days where I have to go to the chiropractor (3 days per week), I don't get home until about 5:15 to 5:30PM. Then, I have to figure out what I'm going to do for dinner...whether I'm going to cook something or just find a fast meal. If I cook, I usually have to go to the market first and buy stuff. By the time I'm done cooking and sitting down and eating, it's about 8:00PM. By then it's too late to even sit down and start a session of poker online.

My days are pretty much limited to the times I don't go to the chiropractor, which are tuesday and thursday. I'd like to make room for Wednesday, because that's when the games get really juicy because of all the WPT fans logging on and pissing their money away on hands they saw win on TV. I also have the weekends free as well so I guess I have plenty of time to play each week. I figure I can play 20+ hours a week if I'm just consistant in disciplining myself to sit down and play on those days.

Running bad sucks. It just sucks! Maybe FullTilt is not the best site to play at to make money. Most of the time the tables are so tight, you're basically paying the house to sit down and fold. Currently I'm observing the action over at Doyle's Room. It looks like the tables are a lot looser than at FullTilt.

I do have good news, though. No, I didn't save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geiko! Actually I won a tournament I run with a bunch of my friends. This wasn't just any tournament, though. This was the tournament! What we do is play a series of ten tournaments in which we recieve points. Basically the higher you finish, the more points you get. If you finish in the money, you get extra points. Once we play our series of ten tournaments, we hold a final event in the series. How the point system plays out in our final event is this...the more points you have, the more chips you have added to your initial stack. I ended up third in overall points which was very nice for me! Even nicer was winning the final event! The final event is where the big money is at because in every event in the series, a points fee is added to the buy-in. These fees are saved to add to the pot for the final event. Each event is a $10 buy-in plus a $1 points fee. After all 10 events there is around $100 saved up from the points fees. The final event is a $15 buy-in. That will put the final event pot around $300. I took down 1st place and $149. I was very pleased with my play that night. I like the system we set up because it evens out the luck factor in our final events.

Anyway, I'll try my abilities over at Doyle's Room for the time being and see if I can make a better profit than at FullTilt. Also, another thing I'd like to mention is that looking at my records, I don't think I've played enough hours to worry too much about my play. One thing I would like to see more of is consistent winning sessions. Right now my winning/losing sessions look like they are based on me flipping a coin. I have a total of 178 hours of play logged which is great, but unfortunately that is from 4 months of play. That should be about 2 months of play. Clearly I need to be putting in more hours per week. So out of a month's worth of full time work, I'm down $122.23. That sucks! It's discouraging to say the least, but I'm not going to give up. I'll try out Doyle's Room and see what happens. Wish me success!

Running Bad

For almost a month now my results have diminished greatly. I'm trying desperately to figure out if it's my play that is suffering or if I'm just running bad. I'm using the same strategy that's kept me winning early on, but now my aggressive style is just being run over constantly. I've almost hit my overall break even point on my bankroll. Once I hit that mark I will move from the .50/1 tables back to the .25/.50 tables to keep my bankroll alive. I'd bitch about all my bad luck I seem to collect, but what good would it do? I guess I'll just have to bite my lip and plow through this cycle of bad luck the best I can.

A Taste of Alligator Blood

After all the time I've put in so far I feel like I need some more advice about my play. Unfortunately I don't have easy access to any professional poker players. All I have to go on are poker forums, books, and my own judgment. The rush of wins I had was just phenomenal. Right now I'm just trying to break my losing streak. After I had my rush of wins I've been on a see-saw rollercoaster of winning and losing that's costing me 4 dollars per hour. I'm still up overall to the tune of $462, but that's after 114 hours of work. I'm not sure what an hourly rate is supposed to be at for .25/.50 NL play but I figure I can do better than that. I've pretty much perfected my pre and post flop strategy, but need to focus more on the players I'm playing. I've written a ton of notes on several people but I feel that maybe I'm not writing down the right things. Also I'm not sure what to do during the period when I'm getting absolutly no cards for a long time, then I pick up a hand, raise, and win the blinds. It seems that once you're on a cold streak of cards and you're waiting for something people pick up on that but at the same time if I were to try to get fancy with my play during that time I run into big hands.

Besides my play I'm also faced with another dilema. This past week I lost my job at the theater because I was being dumb with an idiotic management. Regal Cinemas can go fornicate themselves with an iron stick! Anyway, I still have my day job at the machine shop, but that only pays for my bills. The theater job basically paid for my food, gas, and leftover money to put into savings and poker. The good news is that I have enough money saved up to feed me for about a month until I need another job. If I include my poker money, that extends it a couple more months. Finding employment in California is damn near impossible. I had to job hunt 3 months just to land that lame job at the theater which only paid 8/hr AND was part time! Then the job at the machine shop I got only because one of the managers at the theater works there as well and referred me.

What I'm going to do for now is play a lot of poker online and see what I can squeeze out per month. My only hope is that I can pay for the rest of my expenses as well as build my bankroll. I might have to move up to the .50/1 NL tables but I'm afraid that $1,000 is just not enough at that stage of play. I would have the money if I transfered some of my savings to my poker account, but I don't know if I should risk it. I do have a credit card for backup, but I'm trying not to even consider that as an option. After I lost my job I thought that while I'm playing poker it might cause me to crack under pressure and start playing scared. I'm proud of myself that that hasn't been the result. When I'm at the tables I only concentrate on the game; nothing else. Of course once I'm done playing I start to worry about not having enough money and such but I'm glad I can detach all that at the tables.

It's kind of strange, now that I have a lot more free time, I don't know what to do with it. So far I've just been using it to play poker but I also take time to relax and it's kind of nice for a change. Anyway, I'll post up another update on my poker status in my next post hopefully with a conclusion on one of many decisions that face me regarding the stakes I'll be playing.

Grinding It Out

Good news! Since the time I improved my strategy, my results have had an equal improvement. 68 hours and 9,400 hands later I've managed to make $640 at the .25/.50 NL Holdem tables at Full Tilt. One or two more weeks of play and I will move up to the .50/1 NL tables. I'll tell you what though, it is really hard to keep your sanity when the cards run cold. That's what happened tonight. Fortunatly I have learned to minimize my losses. Tonight's damage was only about -$54. That's not bad considering I just won 5 sessions in a row netting $540. Okay, so updated stats are that I have a net profit of $586.97 , 71 hours, about 9,425+ hands, and a total bankroll of $1,160.87. I have actually played more hands but I couldn't record some of them because the software crashed on me losing all my hand stats in the process. $8.25/hr isn't bad considering I'm playing a .25/.50 NL game. Once I have about $2,000 I want to distribute some of that into my other poker accounts such as party poker, poker stars, and ultimate bet.

Turning Things Around

It's been awhile since my last post so I'll try to just highlight on the most important happennings. During my last post I was getting very discouraged about my dwindling bankroll on Full Tilt. Since then I reviewed some of my books and dvds. I also pondered about how I was playing and what I can change to make my play a lot better so I went back to the basics. Boy were the basics exactly what I needed! I revamped my whole preflop strategy by combining the best bits and pieces from every source of information I had. Trying it out so far has worked wonders! The only thing I am still disappointed about is the number of hours I'm logging in every week. I'd like to play at least 15 hours per week, but I'm only managing to play about 8. This makes my bankroll building a very long process. Now instead of being down $200 I'm only down $82. I think once I get my doctor bills paid off I will be able to afford to cut down my schedule at the theater a little more so I can get some more time in at the tables. Hopefully by then I will be moving up in limits.
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I'm planning on completing my poker table soon. I have the 4th of July off from work so I think what I can do is wake up early and leave for my parents place to start work on my table. Since I don't have any tools I'll have to use my father's. Also since I don't have a truck I'll have to use theirs to haul the plywood and hardware. Once done I'll have a blast with it! I can't wait!

Disappointing Start

Okay, so the past two weeks I deposited $500 into my online account at FullTilt and since then I have been playing .25/.50 NL Holdem within this bankroll plus about $73.90 I had left in there previously. I've logged 20.17 hours so far with a little over 2,410 hands played. I've been keeping close records and stats on my finances and play in Excel. The first week I started off great, but now I've had amazing loses that just baffle me. I've noticed who the regulars are that play the tables everyday. They are very solid players who seem to do well and receive their fair share of action. I know whose raises to avoid and whose to call or reraise. Despite all this I have lost big chunks of my roll four times consecutively.

I'm analyzing everything in my game I can to figure out why I win small and lose big. I would really appreciate some feedback so I am posting my records and stats on my website for anyone to look over. I know I only have 20 hours of play at the tables and should post these with about 100 hours, but I guess I am just too paranoid about recent events. I figure with online play since you are able to get more hands in per hour as well as multi-table, players should have more solid results in a less amount of hours. I might be wrong, though.

Here are the links to my online session records as well as my online stats. Any advice would be much appreciated, thank you.

2004 WSOP Trip with Photos

Here it is! Last year I took a trip to Vegas to watch the last three days of the final event. I took quite a few photos and I'm glad I did because most of them didn't turn out too well but I'm showing you all the cream of the crop right here!

I was able to shoot several pros during the tournament breaks and Amir Vahedi, Andy Bloch, Devilfish and Marcel Luske, Chris Ferguson, and Julian Gardner were among the ones I were lucky enough to meet during this time.







When I first arrived at the Horseshoe Doyle had just been knocked out. Once he collected his check and was on his way out he allowed me to take a snapshot of him.


While the tournament was in play I had the chance to actually talk to a few pros who were watching the action. Among those in the crowd were Daniel Negreanu and Dutch Boyd.



Also during the tournament I was able to get in a few good table shots.




Here's a shot for all you Murph Dog fans out there.


During the tail end of the tournament, they brought out the money (in cardboard boxes) and piled it up into a pretty cool pyramid with the bracelet on top. Also here are some shots of Raymer's victory.




The trip was a great experience for me in so many ways. I'm glad I brought a camera as well because I can flip through them and keep my inspiration toward my goal as going pro strong. Also if anyone wants any high-res tiff images of any of these just send me an email and I'll send whatever you would like.

Coming Soon...2004 WSOP Photos!

I remember I shot photos during my time watching the wsop last year. My next blog will have a bit of a trip report interlaced with the best photos I took there.

Building My Bankroll

Playing the SnG's didn't work as nicely as I had thought. As my previous records show, I had an amazing start, finishing in the money in almost every single sng. Then everything turned sour and I could place in the money for quite a while. After thinking things through for for about a month I decided to try and build a roll at the NL cash games at FullTilt. My plan was to deposit $500 and play the .25/.50 nl tables. I've just now started and things are working out great! I've only played about 5 hours so far and made $103.10. I'd like to get as many hours in as I can in, hopefully about 20 hrs/week. It's hard putting in the hours while working two jobs. Basically it's like adding another part-time job to my schedule. The only problem I'm having is consistancy in playing. I only have three days where I have evenings off from my second job to play poker. Most of the time on those three days I'm usually running errands, doing laundry, cooking, or fixing my car (don't ever buy a dodge neon). Usually all of the above.

Once I put in 100 hours at the tables, I'll reduce my work schedule at the theater (my evening job) if I show any significant profit from it. If my bankroll continues to grow after about 800-1000 hours of play (hopefully at a higher limit than .25/.50) I might discontinue my evening/weekend job at the theater and just work my day job. That way I can put in about 30-40 hours a week. Who knows if all this will happen, this is just what is being laid down in my head so far.

When my roll is nursed to $10,000 I plan on switching to live play over at Lucky Chances in Colma. Their 2-3-5 NL games are pretty juicy. I love going there any chance I get, it's pretty much my favorite place to play. Oak's and Artichoke Joe's are pretty nice places as well but I always feel like I'm going to get mugged walking to my car at those places.

Remembering the Luck Factor

I sometimes forget how harsh luck can be in poker. Today was no exception. Having some free time today I decided to put in a few hours online at FullTilt Poker. I figured I would play about 4 hours and make at least 20 to 30 dollars. Well, I played 9 $5 SnG's and only placed in the money once (3rd place). Very disappointing to say the least. When you're running bad, it feels like the whole world is against you. Luck plays mind games with your head. I keep having to tell myself that it is just a game and that bad beats happen all the time. Here is my SnG Record so far. As you can see I started off running very well. I know these results are not very solid and I need a couple hundred more hours to show more consistant results. I will keep posting updates of my records for everyone to go over. Hopefully I can get a few suggestions on how I might improve my results. In the meantime I will practice a bit more on controlling my emotions when I'm running bad. I took Howard Lederer's advice and read Zen in the Art of Archery. I was so impressed with the book that I browsed a bit more over at Borders and found The Method of Zen by the same author. Those books have proven invaluable to me in helping with controlling my game and staying at peace with myself.

Part of my journey right now I hope to throw into my new website I'm developing at www.tiltdoctor.com. My goal is to give poker players tons of resources to help reduce stress, steaming, and tilt both in their game and in their daily lives.

Keeping Fresh

Finances are still tight right now. I'm waiting for feedback on my financial forms I submitted to the hospital to see what I can do about my huge bill. I also have to talk to a couple doctor offices to see if I can make payments on their bills as well. In the meantime I've been keeping my poker abilities fresh online playing small stakes, mainly the sit and go's. I've been doing quite well and hope to build my deposit up enough to at least pay some bills. I work best under pressure. This applies to everything in my life. I guess you could say I've got alligator blood running through my veins. Also, another task I've been hacking away at is buying parts to build my own poker table. I still can't decide what shape to build, whether an oval shape or round. I'm leaning more towards round since it's easier for everyone to deal that way.

The Setback

Okay, so the beginning of this year I started my second job to pay more bills, but more importantly to save more money to get my bankroll started. A couple of weeks into January I started noticing chronic stomach cramps. I figured this was stress due to working working almost non-stop every week. February came and the stomach pains became worse. An ulcer was on top of my own personal diagnosis and appendicitis took second place. I was a bit worried but figured if I found a way to reduce my stress I would get better. Work at my new job slowed down so they let me go for a couple weeks until business picked up again. Well, the very first day I had off I went to go get checked out at the hospital. Since I was part time at the theater and a temp at the machine shop I didn't have any health insurance. I knew it was going to be expensive but I also knew I had to go. I figured they would just run a few tests, diagnose my condition and give me some meds and be out the same day. Not even close. They kept me there at the hospital for 6 days! They took x-rays, CAT scans, urine, blood, and stool tests. I also had an endoscopy and a colonoscopy done on me. What they found was some inflamation and bleeding in my intestines. The diagnosis the doctor gave me was Crohn's disease. Wonderful, I thought. I had some stupid ass disease for the rest of my life. After my sixth day inside, they finally sent me home. They gave me a prescription for prednisone, a dangerous steroid, Pentasa (mesalamine), and Iron for my Anemia, probably due to my bleeding.

By the time I was home I was feeling a lot better. Since I had a couple weeks off from both jobs I took it upon myself to do some research on Crohn's disease. To my surprise, I found out that Crohn's was not something I really had to live with my whole life! Basically what I had to do was change my way of living and eating habits. With working two jobs I had no time to prepare any decent meals. My diet consisted of sugar snacks, fast food, and Quizno's (it was next to the movie theater). I changed my diet full circle and I am now eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and fish. I also started taking some supplements called Primal Defense HSO. After a few days I felt like a million bucks! Then I started declining and and everytime I ate I vomitted. I figured it could be my medication since I always took it with my meals. I stopped my prescription medication and the vomitting disappeared, though I continued taking the HSOs. Ever since then I haven't had any problems.

Now came my worst fear...the bill! $46,042 was my hospital bill. $1,867 to the GI doctor and $1,200 to some other doctor. Great. How am I going to pay this off?! I called the hospital to see what I could do about the bill so what they did was send me a packet of forms to fill out to see if I qualify to have the bill written off somehow. The write-off is only for the hospital bill and doesn't apply to the doctor fees. The doctor bills are not that much of a problem. I estimated that I could have those two bills paid off in about 6 months. Now if I have the big one written-off, my poker career can start sometime in the beginning of 2006. Hopefully my time away from the tables will not stunt my knowledge and experience growth that much. I will take the time I have the rest of this year while I pay off my bills to hit the books again and study with a more intense focus than ever before.

Finding My Passion

Growing up I always followed the advice of my friends and family regarding what I should do in life. Through my teenage years and early twenties I've fought the battle to follow through with everyone else's counsel and focus more on what I wanted in life. Not until more recently have I been able to break free from them and journey out on my own quest for answers.

Back in the summer of 99 I was fresh out of high school and was wondering whether to test my abilities in the work field or continue my education. I decided to give work a try and landed a full time job as a 411 operator (directory assistance). By 2001 I was fed up with working for incompetent management and making minimum wage, which at the time was $6.25/hr. I now wanted to go back to school. If anything, I needed a change of pace in my life from that soul-snatching job. Junior college was a big stress reliever for me for the time being. I spent two years in school studying music. My goal was to transfer from the small junior college I was attending to CSU Hayward (now CSU East Bay...dumb!). Just one year before my transfer I started feeling the stress of school weighing down on me. Music, the very thing I loved, now started to feel more like boring tedious work. Teachers were starting to tell me what mouthpieces I need to play on, what kind of sound I should work on, etc. Music wasn't fun anymore. People were telling me what to do all over again. I soon gained a renewed confidence in my studies when I met the perfect woman for me. She was also a music student and was starting her first semester at CSU Hayward. The relationship only lasted about 4 months but during that time I made several trips to the campus and attened most of the jazz concerts held there. The campus was very nice with an excellent view of the bay and I couldn't wait to transfer. When my girlfriend dropped me like a wet noodle I was devastated (it was two days before my birthday in january). I now had one semester left of junior college before I transfered to Hayward. I managed to hold my grades up but my music performance became terrible. Everything that I found joy in in music was gone. The semester ended and I sent my transcripts and other papers to Hayward to be transfered. During the summer I landed a job at a movie theater in Dublin and moved in with my brother and his wife. The summer gave me time to reflect on what I truly wanted to do in my life, career wise. I came to the conclusion that music was more of a hobby for me than a career. Registration time for Hayward came and passed that year for me. I now knew that I didn't want to hump some crappy job the rest of my life but I also didn't desire a career in music either. Time ticked away for me as I dwelled pondering what my true passion in life was. Then it hit me!

During the two years I was going to junior college in Sonora, me and my best friend Marc would hit Jackson Rancheria on our time off. I remember I would spend 6 hours straight at a blackjack table loving every second of it. Afterwards my friend and I would spend hours talking about different strategies on blackjack. Also about once a week a bunch of my cousins would hold a poker game at one of their places. It was the usual dealer's choice type of game with wildcards and such. It was a fun and social game which went on for long hours every time. Although fun, at the time I didn't think of gambling as something that someone could make an income off of until I saw the 2003 WSOP on ESPN. I was elucidated to the fact that there are actually people who make money playing poker. They do it for a living! Wow, I was thrilled!

In the beginning of 2004 I now had a road to follow. I soaked up all the information about poker that I could. I read and reread all the major poker books on the market. Sklansky, Brunson, T.J., Lee Jones, (and yeah, I read Hellmuth's book as well). I searched through postings on RGP and posted some questions of my own as well. I also gained some experience in the cardrooms at the California Grand in Pacheco, Lucky Chances in Colma, Oaks in Emeryville, and Artichoke Joe's in San Bruno. The beauty of my move to Dublin was that I was now equi-distant from all the major cardrooms in the bay area. 2004 gave me a wealth of valuable information through soul searching and inspiration. Now a new year, I have a fire burning in me that's hotter and brighter than ever before. This year isn't without it's hardships, though. A trip to the hospital sets my plans even further out, but all this will be in my next post.