696 hands

Slacker McSlackey

Yes, you read that number right. Stuff has been pretty busy at home, but even so I should have been able to stick another 5-10k hands in since my last post. The lack of play has brought a lack of content to write about, and so my blog has been pretty dead for the bulk of August.

Birthday binge week was a shit show as usual, but wasn't as great as I'd hoped. One of my good friends ditched me for a cottage trip on my b-day which I'm pretty cheesed about. The next day a friend came back from summer-long tree planting in BC just in time to get wasted and have a little fun on his birthday. Then the day after, my best friend ditched us all on his birthday for a road trip to Montreal, which of course I'm also cheesed about. So I dunno, things weren't that great. My brain is finally back to %95+ though, which is good. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera around that week, and while other people took some pictures, I haven't seen them posted online yet.

Another spending spree?

I'm sooo bad when it comes to blowing money. I've got like 10 >$200 things I'll be splurging on in the next while. Aside from house costs which I should chip in on (redoing the backyard, fixing the oven, buying a cage for my brother), a lot of other stuff has been falling apart and I really want to fix it all.

Firstly, my speed bag drum (wooden part) broke ages ago, and I'm craving a new one. A friend's dad is a serious carpenter, and I was thinking he could make me a nice one for relatively cheap. The problem is if I stick with my heavy/speed bag stand, it'll have to stay outside since it's so big. Canadian winters (even Toronto ones) aren't too pleasant though, so I've been thinking about dropping like $300 on a nice indoor wall mounted one.

My mom's been wanting a big screen TV for a while since her old CRT piece of shit is...a piece of shit, and I figured I could chop her my 32" samsung which I bought for like a grand for the price of another 24" samsung (~$400). I guess that won't be an expense, but that would be awesome.

My desk isn't exactly broken, but it's definitely getting there. It's also just impractical for what I use it for. All I need is a big open space, and it's got this retarded elevated portion of it that takes up like half the desktop. I want to buy something really nice, like a thin version of a butcher's block, but that would cost upwards of $500 which is ridiculous. Something simple, big, and solid oak or something would be awesome.

Then there's the skydiving. Unfortunately all my friends are broke pussies, so none of them will come with me. My dad (lol!) said he would love to come, but he's the most unreliable person in the world, so I'm expecting nothing of him. I'd hate to go by myself, but I really want to do it before the end of summer. That's another ~$270.

I also got a promise from mummy for a new piece of furniture for my room. My old chest of drawers is falling apart and isn't even big enough for the clothes I own (half of which are piled on top instead of inside), so I think we're going to scrap that and buy a cheap-ish new one from Ikea or something.

One more thing that's scaring me is my PC. Lately the CPU has been getting hotter and hotter, and I've seen it crash more often than normal. The smart thing to do would be to plan ahead by buying a backup CPU or something (maybe a new pc overall?). I think I'll just run it into the ground and fix it up when it breaks down.

Now that I put all that in a list it doesn't even look that expensive (excluding the PC problem), but I'm sure my pockets will still be like 1.5-2k lighter by the end of the month.

This is a poker blog?

So as I mentioned, poker has gone deathly slow. Which sucks. The poker that has gone on however, has been awesome. I'm still running at 10 big bets which is just sick, but then again it's only over an 11.5k sample, most of which happened in the first half of the month. Had a good session last night and I still feel very comfortable at the tables. A huge turnaround considering 6-max was by far my worst game a few months ago. One thing that's definitely given me some confidence is Stosh's coaching.

The first hour, a sweat session, was nice but we didn't really cover too much. Doing what I did for the second hour was much better. I prerecord a 4-tabling session with my thought processes, and he sends me an mp3 with his thoughts on certain hands and general critique back to me. I posted the second hour in cardschat's video section. Video and mp3. In order to get the 'full effect' of his coaching, you'll have to play his mp3 while playing my muted video. He has some minor problems with his eyes, so sometimes he'll say someone is 20/18 when they're 20/10, or he'll say something is at 15:20 when it's at 16:20. Just something to keep in mind. He seemed very impressed with my play which was awesome. Huuuge boost in confidence and I'm realizing now that my technical game is pretty solid, but it's my mental game that needs work.

I should be playing a lot more in the coming weeks now that I have some more free time (dog's gone on a one week trip to the cottage, no more walking!), and I'll probably be posting my coaching sessions as well.

Looking back, if I look at the actual money I spent per hour on Stosh and what I could buy in real life, I'd think "what the fuck am I doing!?", but looking at it in terms of two buyins and the fact that I made up everything back within a week of hooking up with him, I'm perfectly happy.

Back to the grind, see you guys around the forums.