Overdue Update

I haven't made a post since April which is way too long. I haven't made any posts mainly because I didn't play at all this summer because of work. The long dreadful days at the golf course 6am-3pm or later Monday to Friday and 6am-10am on weekends everyday until August 31st. My girlfriend was also home from Maine for the summer so I was working everyday and spending all my evenings with her, so I didn't have any time to play poker which was fine. She went back to school in the first week of August but work was still hectic, so I just figured I would wait until the busy season is over until I start playing again because I don't want to play for like a half hour then go to bed.

School has started again and I am finishing up my BEng Degree this fall at Carleton which is awesome, I can't wait. Work has slowed down, I am working 3 days a week now to make some extra money to pay for rent. I finally moved out and live in Stonebridge with 2 guys I work with. It feels so good to be out on my own rather than living at home and doing so many chores all the time, freedom is nice.

I also took up golf this summer which is sweet. I took advantage of working at a golf course having free rounds so whynot play. I have always played but only once or twice a year, so I am obviously terrible. I work at Cedarhill so it's a nice course to learn on since it's short and not hard. At the beginning of the year I was shooting in the low 100's and I am the sort of guy to get angry when I shoot a bad shot and I shouldn't be mad because I never play the game. But it started to get frustrating when I was playing 4-5 times a week, however I did improve playing that much and that felt awesome. I ended up buying new clubs since I was getting a crazy deal from the Asst. pro in the Pro Shop and he offered me a brand new set of Callaway X-20 Tour irons for $800 which I thought was a pretty sick deal, so I bought those. I don't play with a driver, 3 or 5 wood, strictly irons because I can't hit a driver worth my life and I haven't learnt yet, so I was always using my 3-iron off the tee which is fine since I hit it well, but I lose so much distance at longer courses like the Marshes or Stonebridge. Long story short, I am consistently shooting mid 80s now and hopefully I will be hitting a driver next spring. My best round of the year was an 81 at Stonebridge from the blues which is approx. 6400 yards, so pretty sweet.

On to poker. I wanted to try playing MTTs to see how that would fair. I have always been a great cash game player so I figured trying out MTT's as something new would be cool. I have played a few before and have won some $4.40s so I couldn't be that bad of a beginner. Anyways, I took $300 and played strictly $4.40s and the occasional $11 MTT and I found myself down to $45. I was just on a really bad run of cards and couldn't catch a single break whenever it got deep. My confidence was so low I didn't want to play anymore. I would talk to Adam about it and he would just tell me to keep playing and that I wasn't doing anything wrong, just in standard MTT variance which I was not accustom too. I'll tell you right now, I am totally used to it and it's great. I've been running much better lately. I made 4 or 5 final tables and took 9th, 5th, 3rd, 3rd, 2nd. The second place finish was annoying, but it was nice to build the roll back up. I had 170k to 110k and got it all in PREFLOP with AQ against 9 2... I made it 6k, he made it 21k, I shoved and he called with 9 2. Board ran out 9 5 4 A 2. Happy to say that I have made some profit since starting the MTT experience. So far it's been a fun switch to try something new than the awesome fun grind of cash games.

To top it off, my live game doesn't seem to be rusty either. I ended up chopping heads up in a $80 deepstack tourny at a local game for $520. I will be posting about that tourny in my next blog, which will be soon.