I received the invitation from Dennis a month ago but was still fashionably late when the Saturday came around. It must be in my asian genes! The group was already drinking, eating Mary’s delicious appetiziers and chatting away when I showed up, but thankfully I wasn’t the last person!
The weather was simply magnificent. I wished all the summer days could have been like that – warm and bright with a gentle breeze. The food came and more were on the grill, and everybody was digging in to their heart’s content. I bet even retirement is not this good everyday.
The Main Event
Finally, we got down to the purpose of our gathering. Everybody had been trash talking and it was time to show your skills! Sheila had her poker hardcard (written on the back of a chewing gum package), and everybody was ready to ante up and start the poker tournament.
6 of us played 2 freeze-out sessions that night with Dan winning the first tournament. I dominated the second tournament and won that round. I was the first to bust out in the first round when I tried to catch Richard’s bluff. To my dismay, he showed 2 pairs and I didn’t catch my semi-bluff straight-draw. But redemption was mine in the second session when I knocked out Richard by catching my open-ended straight on the river. The poker gods were smiling on me.
I’m excited to participate in the PokerStars Blogger Tounament. Everything’s all set, and with any luck I may last the estimated 3-5 hours for this tournament. With a field of 1473 contestants, making the final table will be no easy task! Nevertheless, this is one of my goals for the tournament. Another goal is what I’m doing right now, this is my first LiveBlog post so if you’re reading it as we speak, you’re participating in history! The third goal I have going into this tournament is to have fun, chat with other bloggers and perhaps meet some celebrity bloggers and poker players?!?! It could be my brush with greatness!
Everything’s all set, computer’s ready. I’ve killed all the applications that might take bandwidth away. Just being over cautious. From time to time, I experience internet connection problems. Hopefully, today is my lucky day in more than one way! I’m sitting in the living room, playing on my laptop and the TV is tuned to a showing of the World Poker Tour: Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship. Will I be distracted? No, I will probably pay no attention to the TV, I just need some noise because I can’t stand playing poker alone. Weird eh?
To save space for my main page, I will be doing the liveblog in the extended portion of this post. Click on the link ‘Read The Full Post’ to start following the LiveBlog. Off we go!
I received a most insulting email response from a family member regarding my last post about poker. People just don’t get it! I am very upset at this email and was very tempted to publish it for everyone to see. But I thought better of it, and decided to keep it between the people involved. If this family member is reading this post right now, I demand an apology immediately!
I’ve written about my passion for online poker in the past, and how some people have expressed their concern because I love poker. My previous response to those concerns reflected my view that poker is not gambling if you know what you’re doing. I am not betting against the house. I am able to control my betting based on the decisions and information I’ve gathered. Doesn’t that description sound very similar to investing in the stock market?
Tonight, I happened to revisit my Poker Analyst page on CardPlayer.com. I decided to chronicle my poker wins and losses to see if I could analyze a trend, and to be more “business-like” with this hobby. Currently, I have no delusions of becoming a professional gambler. It is merely an enjoyable hobby of mine. I don’t have many dips in my poker winnings because I usually seek out large prize pool freeroll tournaments or profitable low buy-in tournaments.
You can see from the graphs that my poker activitiies have tapered off somewhat, due to my increased activities in other aspects of my life, such as blogging and maintaining my fitness levels. But I have been playing tournaments off and on. I’ve neglected to log the last 20 tournaments that I’ve been playing in, so I would say the graph is off by a little – I’m up approximatley $100 more than the graph is showing!
Anyways, here is the proof that I know how to control my hobbies, and I can remain profitable! Back in January, I was hoping to get a 5 digit profit margin by the end of the year, and I may get there one of these years, but I am very happy to have improved my poker game over the year thus far.
I recently received some negative comments about what I’m looking to do with my projects, about playing online poker. This is in fact what I am looking for; to receive feedback about what I’m doing in my life by publishing them through this weblog. So I’m pretty happy about that. But at the same time, I’m a little frustrated by the knowledge base that was used to form those comments. This is my forum for me to address those issues.
There’s always risk in whatever we do in life. Should we avoid risk? Or should we learn how to manage risk? When you propose to your wife, when you buy a house, these events to some people are very risky things (to me anyways). Some people think investing is risky, but I don’t. I think it’s risky not to be investing. Why is there a discrepancy? What’s the difference between you and me? It lies in how we manage risk, and we can find a way to do so by educating ourselves, and making sure we’re not rushing into things. I’m a Computer Science major graduate, and thus very comfortable with computers. But can you imagine a 70 year old with no computer experiencing a minor panic attack sitting in front of a computer because he thinks it might blow up? The difference is preparation! A 70 year old properly educated and prepared about computers can learn to be as comfortable as myself in front of a computer, or at least more comfortable than he was before.
