Well this was unexpected!

Looks like class is going to be a little out of the question today. Friday of last week my shower began to crumble. That little crumble has turned into a complete shower renovation. Now I have to sit here for a few hours and watch this lovely gentleman chisel out my shower floor with a jack hammer. Needless to say poker was placed on the back burner this weekend and endless hours of watching HGTV with my girlfriend replaced it. Now we have every bathroom makeover show recorded on our DVR. Joy. Looks like I might be able to make it to the casino sometime tomorrow. I'll post something about how I do and if I do t post anything then it probably wasn't a good outing. Anyways.... Sorry I will not be in class today. I will be back on Thursday without a doubt!

My Future Bracelet?

This picture is anyone who plays pokers' primary goal throughout the year. This is the bracelet you receive after winning the Main Event in the World Series of Poker. This is the highest prize you can win and something that every elite poker player strives for. It is (if all things go according to plan) what I will be playing for in the up coming summer. The tournament is in Las Vegas and over 6,000 people usually pay the $10,000 entry fee for a chance to win. In more local news the WSOP Circuit event in Durant, Oklahoma just came to a close. The winner of the $1600 Main Event was Abraham Araya who took home a little over $270,000. Not a bad score for a couple days of work. Some guy named Huy Nguyen, who I've played against a few times at Firelake, won three smaller events and took home about $50,000 total. This was the second year Durant has hosted a circuit event, and the only one in the state of Oklahoma. I will be playing this event next year especially if it continues to grow. There were some pretty big names in the field as well as some no name randoms that still managed to make the final table. 


Not looking good on the online poker home front. Ira Rubin, one of the nine people charged with sending millions of online poker dollars to off shore accounts, plead guilty yesterday in court. This means that he openly admitted to money laundering and basically threw the remaining members under the bus. However, when faced with an 80 year prison that could be reduced to 2, some people will do just about anything. 


I'm going to try to make it to the casino a couple times this weekend to see if I can continue my current winning session streak of ONE,  alive. Wish me luck! 

The Blogosphere and What it means for me

After reviewing the Technorati page today about the evolving world of blogs I learned that there are no limits to what you can do with your blog. It can be used for hobbies or a full time profession. It can be about anything from sports to stocks. The ideas are limitless. It seems that the one crucial element to keeping a blog going is the frequency in which you post. The more you post the more followers and potentially more money you can make. It is amazing how many ways you can go about blogging. It seems like another important factor is getting the word out about your blog. Its no surprise that Twitter plays a huge roll in the effectiveness of a blog. Hopefully with a little work I will have this blog up for many more years.

Getting the Ball Rolling

This is hopefully the start of a very fun and interesting year. One in which I plan on graduating and getting back into the game of poker. As I said in my bio; I was a few months away from going from a low-stakes grinder to a full-time player. Then the government stepped in. Now, I do my best to stay out of politics, but this time it directly impacted my everyday life. In March of 2010 the Department of Justice shut down the top three major poker sites. Mine, Pokerstars.net was the first one to go. This is how thousands of Americans made a living and in an instant it was gone. No time to withdraw the funds that was in their online poker account; not even time to get up from the online table they were currently playing at. That is when poker was put on hold, not just for me, but for everyone living in the US. From that point on poker became just a hobby again. I would get the chance to play a couple of times every month if I was lucky. That's when I decided to take a break. The last nine months have been spent focusing on school and work. I sat and waited, getting my mind together and seeing where the online market was going. At the turn of the new year I came to the realization that online poker wasn't coming back anytime soon. That means it's time to start devoting more and more of my time to "brick and mortar" casinos. This last Saturday was my first day back at the tables, and I quickly realized how much I had missed it. It's not just sitting there and getting good hands and winning some money; its the atmosphere of the card room. It's the conversations that you can have with complete strangers that soon turn into friends. At the end of my six hour session i managed to scratch out a small profit (somewhere around $150), but the comfort of actually being there again was what was truly important. I missed being able to read peoples faces and know their tells; something that frequently gets lost in online poker. Needless to say the poker bug is back and I am excited to see where this year leads.