November Rolls On

Posted by icemonkey9 on Nov 20, 2009 in General | 0 comments

Professionally, November is shaping up to be great.  My contract deal with the ad agency is winding down and I feel I've done a reasonably good job there given the hand I was dealt.  I'm filling in for a guy having a baby who wanted to take 5-6 weeks off to enjoy the experience.  He's the only project manager in the department so a lot rests on his shoulders.  Not easy to fill in for a guy like that!  Anyways, projects are getting done and there's really only been one snafu regarding this cursed rich media banner.  The good news is that even that is close to being done, so for the most part, it's been a success.  The money has helped too.

There's been a few other web-development based projects I've heard about that I am trying to jump on.  I really forgot how much I do love in the industry and how much my experience is needed out there.  I'm an actual commodity which is great.  Hopefully I can end the year with a lot of momentum professionally and take that for a solid 2010.

Poker stuff is going pretty well too.  I've kept up the poker article writing at the various sites I work for and that's been a lot of fun.  Again, the money is pretty good too and in these times I've managed to hold it together.  I really feel lucky and am glad I've made the most of the opportunity.  I pitched the idea of doing an enhanced podcast for one of the sites and we're actually going to put together a pilot episode, so stay tuned for that in the near future ... probably a week or two away at the earliest.

Playing poker ... sigh.  I think I have 2,000 hands played this month at the cash tables.  The other night I was tired but didn't want to do a whole huge cash session so I just played in four tournaments.  Somehow I managed to cash in three, winning the 1 table SNG and finishing 3rd in a 90-man SNG.  Decent night of profit there even if it was $6 stakes!

So that's about it.  I think I might be able to get in some decent sessions soon with Thanksgiving this coming week.  Hopefully I can play my best and really shake off the rust!

First Session in 2 Weeks…

Posted by icemonkey9 on Nov 17, 2009 in coolers | 1 comment

Well, I don't know if you could really classify this as a session, but for the first time in two weeks I actually logged in and played poker for 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, I have a real bad taste in my mouth after playing thanks to some 3rd party software glitches and accidentally taking the tram to coolerville. I played some micro-stakes tables fortunately (50nl) so the damage wasn't horrible, but it was a "whole experience" kind of thing that just left me wondering why I enjoy playing at all.

The first issue I had was with TableNinjaFT and how it slows down the tables and games.  I have a custom table mod installed from TiltBuster, so it's not super random and it should be supported.  What happens is that when TableNinjaFT does its auto-calculation for bets on each street it somehow refreshes the calculation two or three times and everything else stops.  It makes EVERYTHING drag and the entire experience just feels slow, lame, boring and frustrating.

The second issue I had was with Lady Luck, who decided to welcome me back at the table by taking a big fat schat on my face.  There was some standard stuff I really don't mind like shoving AKo against a shorstacker with 99 who won the flip. That's cool.  It was the QQ vs JJ all in at the 5-4-2 rainbow flop for 110 big blinds that saw him hit the river 2-outer that sucked.  Shortly after I stacked QQ preflop against an unknown and whoops he showed up with KK. Might have made a bad shove there, but still, it's my right to vent about how sucky that all was  

So, yes, I'm left wondering "Gee, uh, I used to do that for FUN!?" and question just what the hell I am doing with my time when it comes to playing poker. Considering I have better things to focus on like making a steady income that actually is in proportion to my professional experience and education, it's really hard to justify to myself that playing poker is a worthwhile thing outside of occasional recreational activity.

Of course, if I had WON 2-3 buy-ins thanks to smart play and heaters, I'd probably be singing a different tune!

Where You At?

Posted by icemonkey9 on Nov 6, 2009 in General | 0 comments

No, I'm not selling Boost Mobile phones.  I just needed a snazzy title to explain by absence from my blog as well as the general poker and internet scene.  Not that any has been beating down my doors looking for me, but I took a 6-week contract job to work at an ad agency here in Orange County.  It's an ad agency that handles big nationwide brands and there's a lot of exciting things happening there, so it was a good opportunity for me to make some steady money and make some good contacts.  So far, so good, and when things wrap up at the end of this month I plan to relax.

So, there's not much in the way of poker here because I haven't been playing at all.  In fact, I haven't even had time to upgrade my PC as I've hoped to do the last few weeks.  Tonight, however, I am planning to do the deed finally as all the parts are here and I'll finally have the whole night to get my new super fast computer with Windows 7 running.  I've got everything backed up real nice so hopefully this will be a real smooth transition.

I have kept busy with writing assignments for various sites, so just hop around the big ones and I'm sure you'll find me. I'll hopefully check in on Sunday - see you then.