Balance in my life: music and poker ramblings

Innumeracy

2011-10-31T21:07:00.008-05:00

Letting an entire month slip by without any musings would just be unacceptable.

Edit: obv didn't post when writing which is why this is posted the 9th. Unacceptable by my own standards imo. Anyway,

The thing is, I've been having some interesting moments of self realization as of late which have probably kept me from writing. Plus, writing has seemed somewhat laborious since my brain has been so stimulated by other things. Although, this evening, it'l serve as my therapy.

This one instance of tilt I experienced a few weeks ago...

--------------------

I'm a part of quite a few skype chat groups with players of many different skill levels so it isn't uncommon for the random "blow up" to go down.

"AK hold one timmmmeeee!"

With all the traveling and grinding, I guess it's been a while since I've really observed some of this type of habitual chat. Just seeing this made my blood boil, the same way getting 2 outered in the highest buy in one plays in the midst of a 100 buy in down swing. Frustration compiled with anxiety is probably the best combo of words for the emotion I was feeling actually.

For those of you who don't play poker, a similar feeling would be getting a parking ticket for parking in a 20 minute only spot, but only being there for 8 minutes.

It's frustrating.

Just from examining this simple "tilt" in myself, I have been able to draw some very important lessons that wiill be vital to my longevity as a poker player.

Tilt is the illogical response of us expecting a certain outcome and not receiving it.

Why was I feeling so anxious about this player tilting over AK?

Definately some wierd internal tilt in here that needs further exploring

Some poker players are downright obsessive about checking their bankroll while I somehow managed to accomplish quite the opposite. It's abut to the point where I a scared to. I divert my eyes when doing transfers, don't check my bankroll for weeks, and I even looked away out of habit when I was watching a horse over teamviewer loading up some games. Now, I would say that this is the lesser of two evils, but I think the lengths that I go to simply to "not know", have gotten a bit much to the point where it is just not good.

I've been feeding my brain a constant loop that is saying...

"Looking at your bankroll causes tilt."

"Looking at your bankroll is weak."

"Frequent peeks is what inexperienced players do."

All this in turn translates to - well because tilting will make us lose money....

"Looking at your bankroll will cause you to lose money"

All this is completely untrue as it is only my own mind that will clouded with these false perceptions. This constant loop in my brain has now organized my neurons to alert me of danger whenever I check my bankroll. While that may have been true in the past, I feel it is very much an illogical response now.

"Expecting anything in poker will bring danger"

Is this what I feel?

If a tiger were to bite a small child in the early years of his or her life, that particular child is most likely going to have a fear for tigers later on in life

Does looking at a bankroll physically cause me to click the wrong buttons?

No...

Would observing a tiger cause any physical harm to the child that ran grossly below zoo life EV?

Of course not, right?

Then why are we still afraid?

Last Tuesday, I ended up going to a different massage therapist than normal because the usual one had some sort of emergency to tend to. Long story short, she gives me a copy of "How To See Yourself As You Really Are" by the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) at the end of the session.

Later that night, I got a headache which really does not happen at all. Walking even hurt my head, so I thought maybe listening to this book on tape would be a rather calming way to end the night. It's about 3:30am and I'm lying in bed searching for this book on iTunes, only to end up miss click buying another book with a similar looking bald Tibetan monk on the front cover.

Although a rather cheesy title, The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche has provided me with a lot more depth than I initially assumed. The Author takes the inner workings of Tibetan meditation and analyzes it with Neuroscience.

"The mind is the source of all expereince, and by changing the direction of the mind, we can change the quality of everything we experience. When you transform your mind, everything you experience is transformed."

"What makes my dinner taste good?"

This simple question has been on my mind many more hours than any poker hand since hearing it.

Let's assume that a Big Mac is in front of me and I'll go over a hypothetical (but probably accurate) thought process towards this meal.

When I'm 2-4 years old, I may have said something like my tongue. Shortly after, I probably learned about my taste buds and different areas of the mouth that are developed for each type of taste. Later on, I learned that it was my tongue sending electrical impulses to my brain telling me it tasted good. And at some point between all that, I probably would have told you it was the bacon I had added on my Big Mac or something ridiculous like that. 20-18 years later, I'm left with the mind. The mind is what has made the Big Mac taste good.

It is because I have many positive memories with family and friends while hamburgers are present. It is because of our ancestors and the hunter gatherer diets we came from. A hamburger has cured me of hunger many times, enabling me to survive.

Taking all of this in, I recall various examples in "The Brain That Changes Itself" where mental practice /meditation alone has helped students play the piano better just by practicing in their head 2 hours a day.

Although I have been very aware of these happenings before, it is pretty insane how just hearing the eastern view converge with the westeren view has casued further understanding.

The power of thinking can bring about physical change.

Then why are we still afraid?

This is a good question that I think is very personal dependent, but this is my current take on it.

First, think of tilting moments in poker.

Getting 2 outered on the river....

Bubbling a sng, after being cl on the bubble,

Missing a 15 out draw after running into in to the top of a 45/13's range.

Tilt is the illogical response of us expecting a certain outcome and not receiving it.

Tilt is the illogical response of us expecting a certain outcome and not receiving it.

Tilt is the illogical response of us expecting a certain outcome and not receiving it.

We all love strat and probably have a competative nature. We got into the game because of these things, plus the oveall dissallusion that money can buy happiness.

"Money can buy happiness, and it will come pretty quick with poker."

I think at the root of it all, this is the mindset of a lot of players, even though we dont even realize it

We spend out time learning, grinding, and possibly tilting when we don't get results.

After all, we expect to win money when playing.

Expect.

So if we don't win, we lose happiness.

Yes?

No?

This can be true or false, and it completely depends on one's self

Poker is a longterm game, so why don't we just focus on the long term results?.....or maybe even just the things that matter...

We all have different goals we want to accomplish in life through poker.

I guess the best approuch would be to establish specific goals, and if we don't reach those by the end of the year, then go back and filter through all our flips, watch them, then bitch about our bad beats.

Would it make a difference?

Then why decide to complain in the moment.

Negative emotion is created within out head, and in many cases, we have the power to conquer it.

Lastly, a quick $ev breakdown of your yearly whine rate....

Player X makes $60/hour

Player X whines ~30 min a day (a serious reality for many grinders)

Player X grinds 5 days a week for 45 weeks of the year.

30 minutes, 5 days a week, over 45 weeks = 6,750 minutes = $6,750

This doesn't take into account how negative emotion will affect ones roi learning the rest of the due to lack of focus and poor play.

Tilting

"We all talk to ourselves. A major key to success exists in what we say to ourselves, which helps to shape our attitude and mindset."

- Darren L. Johnson

-Ben

Week 3

2011-09-23T06:18:00.002-05:00

So as you can see posted below, jd4wg has the actual lead at the moment. However he posted in his 2p2 thread that he is done with the competition for the rest of the month. While this will make the competition a bit less stressful, I'm certainly not going to let up.

1. jd4wg91 2,296,740

2. reasons14 2,133,308

3. Crzzy2000 1,085,820

I took some time off to grind the World Series Circuit events in Shreveport like I had mentioned in my last post and had two successful trips. After busting the ring event, I late regged a small nightly $120 and ended up chopping it for 3.1k three handed. The best part of that was I was last in chips by a huge margin and gained ~1k in equity through the chop, lol donkaments. The second was pretty hilarious because I got heads up with one of my live poker buddies I've been hanging out with quite a bit. We ended up both taking $2500 then playing for the additional $700 that was left in the prize pool. I 3b shoved a5 into his aq and binked a 5 on the river ftw lol.

In between these two trips, ACL was this past weekend which was awesome as well. I'll give a much more detailed trip report of the donkaments and ACL in about a week or so, but I just wanted to give a short update on the contest. It's 7am right now and I need to go to bed. My sched is pretty messed up, but it's sort of geared to start when the Blackchip sngs start popping off.

My new computer should be here tomorrow and I'm very much looking forward to picking up the slack on it. I had my old roommate Noah come over and customize everything for me since he is super good w comps. Before shipping, the total was about 2.3k or something.. I'll post specs/pics later.....and come to think of it, I actually don't even know what type of computer it is lol. I guess you can say I trust my friends opinion.

Speaking of, here is a video of us in our dorm a little over three years ago. I know I've posted it on here at some point, but here it is again. I dress completely differently than I did three years ago but I'm thinking about growing the hair out one last time haha.

Anyhow, I'm about to pass out at the keyboard now so I should get some sleep.

Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Week 1

2011-09-08T04:20:00.002-05:00

Point breakdown for the first week of the Merge competition.

reasons14 - 1,348,803

jd4wg91 - 1,091,005

vicotia - 452,694

Crzzy2000 - 371,708

lolTRlCKED - 345,818

I'm going to be missing the World Series circuit events in Shreveport starting tomorrow until I feel I have a super solid handle on this competition. Right now it's to the point where one day off can make the difference. The whole series lasts ~2 weeks so if things look good regarding the competition, I'll be able to catch the later half of it.

My weekend play was sort of sloppy but I'm pretty sure I have my head on straight now. The last few sessions I've put in have been really focused and contained virtually no tilt. I've decided that it's time for this current set up to go as well. My comp has been lagging with all my tables up so I haven't been on skype, listened to music, or even had any web pages open during my sessions which seems to be the norm. I've lived in this place for well over a year now and I still haven't gotten another desk either. After playing 8-15 hours a day 7 days in a row, I've realized I need just a litttttle bit more comfort and functionality. I've had this set up since I played the $6/18s on stars and it's been fantastic but def overdue. Picking up new equipment should be pretty fun as well.

For the first time in a while I can finally say my health is improving again. This week I started cutting out the junk food, drinking more water, and running. Yes, my arms are in fact sore just from the running, but at least it's a start lol. I've been super sore since starting and finally got a massage today which helped a ton. Between all the volume and poker stress I think it's a good idea to get one every week this month and see how it goes.

I feel I got the rust knocked off everything these past few days and will really be looking to pound the nails in the coffin this week.

Legit mix for all you Zelda fans haha.

Thanks for stopping by,

-Reasons

Grind Mode

2011-09-03T04:03:00.005-05:00

New York was awesome....I'm going to have to tell you guys about it later because I'm insanely tired and busy. My right hand is hurting day three into September...but more about that later.

I final tabled some $560 event and did a 10 way chop for $16,000. I was was about 5 in chips and the only one refusing the chop at first, so I got around $500 in extra equity that came out of the players pockets. If we were to kept playing, effective stacks would have been 20bb which doesn't leave much play left.

Matty/MrPaintball was a beast and final tabled the main even $1,650 buy in after almost not even coming. After some brutal rivers and close calls, he busted 8th for $14,000, just shy of the 6 handed final table.

I stayed longer in New York than I expected, but just short enough to miss the hurricane. I'll write about more that in my next post. Right now I would like to just throw down the plan for right now.

I'm taking a super light load regarding school...I think. Classes started this past week and I never got around to signing up which actually may turn out to be a good thing.

Midnight of this month, one of my friends/students was sweating me and I noticed quite a few 6m super turbos going off. I realized it was midnight and instantly hopped on the grind myself. A few hours into the night, me and my friend John ended up forming a prop bet.

I have to win the Merge SNG Leader board for September.

2.25k-1k In my favor.

Boom. Next day right out of the gate, I snap of 7 sngs in a row which is massive for the bonus multiplier. If the streaker bonus holds, that would be an extra $750 on top of the 2k for the bonus. So yeah, me shipping this leaderboard means and extra $5000 in bonuses/prop bets for me.

Now the best situation is I average $1.00/game after rakeback and play 12k of them this month having a 17k month. Because of this situation available to me, I decided to take school off this semester...or just an easy load.

Yes, one semester to go and I'm still putting it off. Why?

I think it's the smart thing to do in my situation given I have the ability to grind. It looks that U.S legislation is doing pretty decent in regards to moving online poker along (really I have no idea, I've just heard and I would looooove to have a nice juicy roll for staking when it comes back. They few classes I need to take aren't going anywhere, and I still plan on being in the same spot because my girlfriend has another semester after this one.

I've been on a massive poker high since coming off of the trip. I've been thinking, studying, coaching, and playing, tons and tons of poker. I'm going to hit it disgustingly hard this next month.

Tilt, health, and all those other crazy things are going to play a huge factor for me this month. See the all in variance of poker is just about the most disgusting thing one can do and playing super turbos are the exact way to do it.

Here are the rankings so far 5 hours into day three.

1. reasons14 67,460 7 472,220

2. jd4wg91 52,861 5 264,305

3. Crzzy2000 52,041 4 208,165

4. lolTRlCKED 33,750 4 135,002

5. letsdosthis1267 28,994 4 115,976

I don't have any exact plan on how much i'll be playing. Right now I have over 1200 sngs so I'm guessing ~500/day when playing will be pretty standard. I'm going to start going to yoga just about every morning and running in the afternoon. Time management is going to be super vital for me as long as I want to have some life outside of poker. It's just way way way too easy to just get into inf grind mode and not even go outside.

Anyhow, it's 5am and I would like to get some sleep and get up right when the games are poppin all fresh. Here is something for the daily grind....

Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin/Reasons14

Indiana

2011-08-10T04:01:00.003-05:00

The drive to New York has slowed down a little as I've been having a pretty good time in Indiana. I met up with xboxlucas and MCC3504 after knowing them for 2-3 years from the 18 mans.

I'm +399 more in the games for a total of $872

Hotel - $122

Lunch - $24

Coffee -$3

Gas - $91

Bar - $23

+ $136

$358+$136= $494 trip total

I'm really getting into the poker mindset with all this thinking I get to do while driving. I saw 200s, 300s, and 500s, (all 6ms hypers) loading today and know I should be playing in those games. If I had my Pokerstars/FullTilt roll a few months ago I would already be in them, but really don't want to take a massive hit. I'll be grinding for a few thousand more for my online roll than most likely take a 7k shot at playing everything up to the $360's. I haven't been on the regular online grind for a while now, but it seems the higher stakes regs are all playing around 1:30 A.M CT (my time), which could make for some interesting planning this upcoming semester.

I think my drive tomorrow is only around 9 hours so I should be able to relax and not have to rush or anything. I was initially planning to hang out in New York today but I just ended up hanging out here. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in another day whenever I'm done playing to hang out.

It is a sad thought to think that out of how many days people waste, some never take the time to drive across the country. Definitely consider it if you have the chance.

I got Jessica some ACL tickets for her birthday and I'm getting way stoked to see Pretty Lights. If anyone else is going to be down there let me know...Really though, take the time turn up your speakers and feel this song.

This blog was a brief outline of my thoughts over the course of a few hours. I hope to expand upon it all later when I feel like writing more.

-Ben

Driving to New York

2011-08-08T05:45:00.003-05:00

First entry is on Aug 2nd. I started a post and never finished. Now I guess i'll put it up anyhow...

"I know that I've been in the mood to write over the last couples of days, but right now everything is just escaping my head and I'm just not feeling it. Honestly, the most compelling thing behind me is that it is the first of the month, and in some far off universe, I believe I tried to make a post around this time...

Really though, I have all this stuff I want to write but feel this blog isn't the place. I've been tinkering around with a few ideas in my head concerning which direction to take my thoughts. It seems to occur more and more that I want to write a new post, but feel I can't for some sort of privacy reasons. The idea of starting a public/anonymous blog has been lingering in the back of my head since the begging of the summer. I've been asking quite a few people whether they think everyone's life could be an interesting book or not. You know, if every thought were to be recorded. Being able to write 100% whatever I want sounds truly awesome.

Looking at my past years of blogging, this one is pretty sad.

2008 - 40 posts (and I started in June)

2009 - 53 posts

2010 - 40 posts (oh em gee)

2011 - 9 posts...and half of the year is gone

Only excuse I can think of right now is that this was initially a blog about music and poker and there just hasn't been as much of that going on as of late. Not that I'm growing away from either of those by any means. Perhaps I've just been enjoying the summer a little. I should probably save the recap i'm actually somewhat curious myself to see where I've been so far."

August 8th.

So I decided a few days ago that I would drive to New York and play the Heartland Poker Series at Turningstone. It isn't the most massive series or anything (Main Event is $1,650), but I'm going to meet some friends, collect some money, play some cards, and hopefully make some money. Flying may been a bit more convenient, but driving has been quite enjoyable to me as of late.

I'm going to do something this blog has never seen before....and that is do a decent log of a poker trip. I'll be playing every day and keeping track of expenses etc. Seems like a fun exercise and will maybe turn into a habit for every trip.

Aside from posting every day this trip. I'm really just going to try a lot more of posts in general then see how I feel about the previous post.

August 7th-

Put in a small session in the A.M today and ran decent...

19 $28.04 $50 15% $533

Gas and food - $62

Hotel - $113

Day one = +358

Trip Total +$358

As you can see, since the last attempted entry, I've gone into grind mode. I decided when I get back to school, I'll be putting in a lot of hours at the tables. My target number of Sngs/month is 5000, not counting some some mtt sessions I'll try and squeeze in on weekends. With no Violin this semester, I don't really see why I can't average to work 5.7 days out of the week or so. I'm hoping with Sngs, Bonuses, Mtts, Rakeback, affiliate stuff, and the occasional staking, a 12k month would be sustainable.

I'll try and post some about Vegas when I have more energy. I've been up for 20+ hours so I feel my writing has been sub par regardless.

It's 7 A.M and I have late check out at 2 pm. 6 hours of sleep, shower, then back on the road to Indiana.

Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Main Event

2011-07-10T12:03:00.002-05:00

Edit - Wrote this a few days ago, just now posting it.

Like I have said many times before , almost in somewhat of a reminiscent manner(maybe not on this blog), It’s hard to get that feeling again. The pure elation we get from playing poker that was once fresh and exciting, transforms into a monotonous and stressful grind.

I may just be beginning to understand why a losing player remains a losing player for so long.

Novelty wears off…..sometimes.

We all have examples in our daily lives where this has occurred on numerous occasions. Getting tired of a new house, car, girlfriend, boyfriend (I wonder how any women or gays read this blog actually), drug, restaurant, band, or religion, are all things our human brains can get tire of at some point in our life. The true measure at which we really care about something is often tested by the duration of time we are involved with this person or thing, and how we spend our time with it.

The learning curve that one encounters when improving at poker is quite steep one, even at the midstakes. There are less resources to get better, competition is stiffer, and sometimes it’s been hard to get a game going.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is, it’s really tough to get that dopamine fix.

A losing player is constantly feeling that excitement we were once exposed to. They are addicted to the feeling of losing (seriously) and there has been even been a case where someone was quoted saying that he could not even go to sleep without that specific feeling. So, the choice to stop improving is still keeping the novelty? Poker is always fun for them. Poker will always be profitable.

After toying with the idea for a day or two, I booked my plane ticket to Vegas and would be leaving the next day.

If I ever played the main event, I didn’t really imagine the circumstances like this. I think when we all start out playing, the idea of playing the main event is completely foreign to us. I know I was still nervous moving from the $1.20 sngs to the $3.25s after finally not busto‘ing a $50 deposit. Last year and a few days ago, I was up 40+ stories on top of the Rio, celebrating the 4th of July, and Draqq told me I would be playing the main this year. Just getting my feet wet in 1,500s, I didn’t believe him.

Half way though what seems to be a non conventional summer, I think playing in it is the only way to cap it off. It’s going to be nice to get that feeling.

Should I be playing?

It’s personal dependent, obv.

Last year, I was more properly rolled for it than I am now bankroll wise, but not skill wise. Notice how I say “more properly”. My thinking has changed a tremendous amount in the short span of a year. What it comes down to now is do I want to lose $10,000 88% of the time and see if something good happens to the other 12%?

Despite what has happened recently with online poker, I still managed to squeak out a 11k month in June. I probably worked half of the month at best and never got on any sort of a regular schedule. Come to think of it, I haven’t slept in the same location for more than 5 days in just about the past 2 months. Needless to say, I am very proud of my month and feel quite secure with my choice to keep playing online.

Playing on Blackchip is forcing me to play different forms of poker than I used to and I seem to enjoy the challenge so far. I focused mainly on super turbos and mtts this month and see that being the normal for the months to come. I’m really loving my mtt sessions right now because I’ll usually have 6 tables up at the most and it’s allowing me to be more creative in spots. I’ve had some new great success with students and still have emails asking if I’m still coaching. It’s been hard to get in the coaching sessions because of my irregular schedule, but I’m still making the time to.

Lifting off, I just had the realization I need to travel more. The plane ticket was ~$200 for a one way, and it takes 3 hours to get to Vegas. With time it takes to get to the airport, that’s just the equivalent, of driving to Austin for me. However, if you were to ask, I would tell you I would be going to Austin a lot more, even if the $200 wasn’t an issue. Probably the only reason why this though really sank in is because I booked this trip such short notice, sort of like I do my normal plans. I’ll probably be trying to take more trips in the near future.

Have much more to write but just a few more minutes until landing so electronics need to be turned off.

Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Little Boxes

2011-06-09T15:49:00.002-05:00

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

For those of you that have seen the show "Weeds", you'll recognize the above song. I really couldn't agree with it more and I'm sure a lot of poker players can relate to the words. The only time I watch TV aside from documentaries is at home/on break. I'm about midway through the third season and it's fantastic. I highly recommend watching the series.

So, I've come to the conclusion that I will never complete any sort of goal that I outline on my blog for the months. In the same regard, I think if I did, life would become a little too monotonous. Since my trip to New York, I've been in 4 different states and slept in 7 different locations. I'm travelling to Austin tomorrow with my girlfriend and some of her friends and will be staying at an old student/friends place. While I do love the travelling, not being in one place for an extended amount of time has really worn on me.

I met up with Jshilling09, Mdg0rd0n, and get_raised21 up at Turningstone and it was a pretty good time overall. Between bricking all the tournies and doing decent in prop bets and cash games, I think I came out about breakeven for the trip. Certainly not optimal, but I am proud of the way I played for the most part. I also haven't played a hand of live cash in exactly a year, so getting used to that was a big factor as well. I was sitting at 2/5 95% of the time and the games were pretty good aside from the first day I got there. I sat at 5/10 one evening but got up after about 40 minutes because the table sucked. I was on the must move table in the back of the list and it would have taken far to long to get to the juicy main table.

Between New York, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, I can't ever being a live pro. Most days I was grinding cash from 12-17 hours per session. Being a live pro it seems a must to play more than 40 hours a week to get a decent sample per week in which is just absurd. To me, it destroys the reason why I became a poker player as it takes a certain amount of freedom away that online poker grants you. Not only is the freedom gone but the people in card rooms are usually not pleasurable to be around. Every middle aged man that is single and over 35, feels the need to waltz into the cardroom and tell the rest of the players how bad their life sucks. The hourly at life cash is certainly not worth listening those degenerates in my opinion.

Online has been weird for this month. The first day I plan to grind my internet goes out at my apartment and because of the volume I am trying to get in, I don't feel like grinding on my laptop. I called my friend lynzeb up who lives like an hour away and drive to her house to fit some games in. No hud, different mouse, different keyboard, different everything, have all affected me to some degree, but I feel I am doing ok. I've had two silver stars on sharkscope in the meantime, but because of my travelling, I have been fluctuating with it. Right now i'm 19th in any game 5-6 players super turbo $16-$35 total profit 2011. My internet should finally be fixed after this weekend when I get back to my apartment on monday so volume shoudn't be an issue. I don't see any reason why I can't be on three leaderboards and have a top 5 spot.

It seems to have been awhile since I've flown on a plane. It's a really cool perspective to just realize how small we are in the universe and how intricate our own lives are. With all this time on the road, I've had a lot of time to think about my own life, mostly relating to the song I posted at the top.

What is normal?

I've had numerous people tell me the things I do, or don't do for that matter, is not normal. All this really makes no sense to me. Our surroundings, personal lifestyle, generation we live in, is what our own perceived normal is. I guess what people don't realize is that what they perceive as normal, only 1% of the entire population in the world would agree with them. To this day, the whole concept of online poker still blows my mind. The majority of the world does not even have access to the internet and I start going insane when I don't have it. Seeing as you're reading this blog right now, the internet seems like a good example. Even so, the majority of the world doesn't have access to a Wal-Mart even (I loathe that place as well), and if someone was to abstain from going, that would seem weird to us. Being an online professional poker player has only been in an option in this world for about 10 years now? Pretty cool to think of it that way.

I could keep writing more, but I have more volume to put in. Thanks for all the feedback and recent advice as of late. I most definitely appreciate it. I messed up my laptop, again. So if you haven't seen me on skype at all recently, that's why. I should be online at a more regular basis starting this coming monday. Hope the month is going well for you all,

-Reasons

Metamorphosis

2011-05-15T19:02:00.001-05:00

Sleep was beyond impossible to get the night before my senior recital. I decided to run to the music building the last second to play a few notes and ease my mind, only to find that the doors were locked. I was really wanting to make sure the notes were in my fingers one last time. Whether I would get more or less notes correct the next day didn't really matter. I was simply trying to prevent any performance anxiety that would affect me the next day like it had in past performances. In the midst of my brief frustration, I quickly found myself taking a walk around campus sort of pondering the role that music plays in my life. What I came to realize is that I haven't been able to enjoy music for the last 2.5 years of my life.

For those of you who don't have a photographic memory, 2.5 years ago I was contemplating dropping out of school to pursue poker. After talking with my conductor and really weighing how well (or not well) my family would take it, I decided to stay. Obviously a whole lot more goes into that, but that is the basic rundown of it. Anyways...

Because I have no desire to use my degree, the skill I have on my instrument is all I have to show for whenever I graduate. I have spent so much time on the "degree" aspect, that practicing was what the first item to be put on the back-burner. So now it's all this other stuff that I'm slaving over that I am not going to use? I know how frustrating it is working with a student that doesn't care or isn't motivated. I can't help but feel sorry for my violin professor because I hadn't played up to my potential in the time spent under her. The fact is, despite playing the violin since I was three, I am not even close to as good I should be. All my four years worth of violin playing are to be displayed tomorrow in front of whoever decides to come, lovely. As far as my degree goes, I don't care about it much. Rather, I feel I was cheated by the system because I have spent so much time and energy doing things that have zero relevancy in my life.

Only now did I have time to sift through the confusion in my head since April 15th. I felt that something was taken away from me on the poker world's "Black Friday", and now I was understanding why. I sacrificed school work, friends, and my love for music, to get where I am in the poker world...now all of that is gone and I have nothing to show for it? There were a few moments where I had thought 4 years of my life were wasted because I wouldn't be able to use any of the ability I had worked so hard to gain, music or poker. Obviously that is a bit extreme but that sort of thought would only be natural in my situation.

Regarding actually using my degree, I don't have the mental/emotional control to teach a classroom full of kids. It is nonexistent. I have been so far moved away from "normal", that the thought of waking up at 7 in the morning to make 33k/year starts giving me anxiety. Even the simple act of going to the grocery store gives me anxiety. I felt super productive filling up my gas the other day. That's just how it is now.

I still don't exactly understand how I didn't end up with sweaty cold palms and a shaky bow. Of course I was nervous a little. But, in contrast to how I usually play in front of people, that was the best I had ever played. While this isn't a huge deal to anyone else, it's a pretty massive one to me. It signifies the completing of my inadvertent metamorphosis I started almost 3 years ago from musician to poker player.

I don't exactly remember giving a fist pump, but who knows lol.

So, this leaves us at poker.

What does one do when the day online poker for the U.S shuts down and the day that one wishes to become a full time poker professional are the same? Be water my friend.

After Black Friday, I browsed through numerous blogs getting everyone's point of view on the matter. It was mostly me just seeking the knowledge that other seasoned pros had to offer since they had been through situations similar to this before. I found the above clip on Zimba's blog and felt it spoke to me the loudest above anything else I had seen or read.

Poker in the U.S is far too big of an industry for something to not come through in a year or so. I am confident of that. Many serious players still view poker just as much of game as it is a job. And to this present situation, I see it as a challenge.

Right now, the smaller networks available to the U.S are getting heaps of new players at the tables. Because it is getting more difficult to deposit, and because poker means a lot more to the winning reg than it does to to the fish, it is a high percentage of regs that are coming over. I think being able to progress as a player during a time which the games are supposedly going to be the toughest they have ever been, will be a huge. This overnight change in the poker world is causing many players to find jobs, leave the country, and quit the game all together. I'll be focusing harder on poker than I ever have before. Seeing as I now have triple the amount of time I used to for poker, there is no longer any sort of excuse.

Stating June, I plan on-

Playing 45 hours a week.

Studying 15 hours a week

Coaching 5 hours a week

Yoga every day

Running 5x a week

Music 5 hours a week

1st on the Merge Sng leader board.

Earn a silver star on the Sharkscope leader boards

15k/month profit

That's about 80 hours mapped out of a 168 hour week. 80 hours plus the 45 hours a week I plan on sleeping, leaves me with 43 hours left to do whatever. Being that 43 hours would be considered overtime in the standard work week, I have an absurd amount of time to do things like hang out with my friends and maybe see this thing people call sunlight. So if anyone asks me what my job is now that I'm done with school, I'll just tell them I hang out with my friends for a living and play poker for fun.

If you are thinking about playing poker and haven't heard, the Merge network is halting any new rakeback accounts being created after this month. Rakeback is going to be a massive factor in everyone's winrate so it's important to get it asap. Merge has double the traffic any other network is able to provide to the U.S market. Sign up through me on Blackchippoker.com and talk to me before hand. I'll definitely do what I can to get you rakeback deal that is above the industry standard.

If anyone is going to be at Turningstone for the East Coast Poker Championships, let me know. I'll be there from the 17th-23rd. I don't even know where I'm staying yet and will figure it out when I get there. I'll probably try and make some smaller trips like this throughout the summer since as of right now I plan not to go to Vegas. I feel that getting my head on solid through this transition will require a huge amount of focus. While going to Vegas is super profitable, last year it caused me to lose track of real life stuff and get behind on coaching/staking. With a lot of my friends graduating and the fact that it will probably be my last summer living here, I'd rather spend time with friends. Either way, I'm looking very much forward to this summer.

Thanks for reading,

-Reasons

There Is No Failure

2011-04-16T13:54:00.006-05:00

“We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.”

-Leo F. Buscaglia

Yesterday was a historic day for the new generation of poker players such as myself. Anyone who plays poker has heard about the initial falling of the sky back in the Party Poker days...Something that we never were prepared to face.

Trying to just think logically about what to do, I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon blank starring at my monitors while talking on skype with the other SngReason coaches.

Some good news, I did just sign on with Blackchippoker.com as a sponsored pro. The Merge network is up and running fine right now as the processors. If anyone reading is interested in signing up, I can get your 40%+ rakeback. The cash games are pretty juicy... I know you serious grinders need to get back on your feet, hopefully I can be of service.

Having about 80,000 locked up is such a surreal amount. I've never actually had all the money in my bank account, so it's tough to really grasp. I only sorted to fathom it when I was calculating where all my funds were. I don't have much in my bank account at home and i'm not diversified at all. If anything has ever motivated me to grind, it's this.

I encourage everyone to keep using this time to be as productive as possible and to worry about the things that are within your control.

I'm keeping this short because things are still in a frenzy and i'm already focusing hard on rebuilding.

Best of luck to you all,

-Reasons14

Breathing Space

2011-03-13T14:31:00.002-05:00

I'm on spring break now in Colorado with my girlfriend and her family. I've been very much looking forward to it as things were getting mad hectic.

I primarily wanted to just let you all know that i'll be back monday 21st for coaching. The video I was telling you all (my private students) about, messed up in the recording process and never got finished. Thank you all for being patient.

If you all really need to contact me, email is going to be the best way. I have no phone service and will rarely be on skype.

Good luck in the meantime.

-Ben

Nothing To Lose

2011-02-28T11:02:00.002-06:00

8 A.M. Monday morning, after 3 alarms finish their cycle of obnoxious ringing, I reluctantly get out of bed so I don't miss my first period "Form and Analysis" class. You see, it's important that I have perfect attendance in that class so I can drop my lowest quiz grade. That might play an important role in my passing of that class, even though we only have to score a D.

I'm the last one in the room writing down the few chords of music I can manage to process in my brain. Time is up before I can finish the test that, the test we started last class period. Off to conducting class.

Hoping I can run well in class variance, I was anxious to know if we had a quiz this morning. I had no clue what so ever as I had skipped this particular class last Friday. I didn't skip because it was my birthday, I skipped so I can practice for my violin lesson. You see as a music student, I have to prioritize which music class is more important, what teacher I want to disappoint the least. I won a 60/40 and we didn't have a test, rather we were being assigned a composer in which we have to write a presentation on. It's due March 11th, but I know it's fate that it'l be written a few hours before class.

Birthdays, although just a number, have always served as a great time for introspective thought on my life. In this window of 3 hours that just past by, I really couldn't help by realize how fortunate I am to be a poker player. My conducting professor was doing a fantastic job today of scaring us today. Fact after statistic was thrown out on how ridiculously tough it is to attain a job as a music teacher, and how he is recommitting himself to helping us. Pondering the current job market as an educator, I don't think I could convince myself any further: The variance in being apart of a system in which we have no control over, will always be far more great than that of poker. Yes, there is variance in the game, but I am starting to realize more and more how I think it's an excuse. Ever since I decided to play poker professionally, three months have not passed in which I've looked back and thought to myself "wow, I knew nothing compared to what I know now".

Micro and Macro evolution occurs within all facets of life. Is it possible, that because a poker players separates themselves from the world so much, that he or she misses out on this rather elementary connection? In nature, being the fittest, self-aware, and humble, are what makes creatures live another day. As poker players, we are no different.

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing"

-Thomas Jefferson

Nothing to lose
if we
are wise
we're not
expecting rainbow
colored skies
not right away

both you and I
have seen what time can do
we only have ourselves
if we built dreams that don't come true

I've contemplated whether to go on with updates or just let the above stand alone. Maybe take a break from reading and let what was said linger in your mind for a bit.

My only guess for the accidental delay in posts is my lack of sleep. I may have said it before, but I guarantee you it is more true now than before. At this point in my life, this is the least amount of sleep I have ever seen. After reading some of the meh posts I have made on this blog, I concluded that I just hate writing on little sleep. My week staggers of 8 and 9 AM music classes. You may hear me talking about fold equity, villains, and merging ranges in some of my vids. But at 7AM, when i'm guessing most of you all have hardly gone to bed, i'm getting up to teach 5th graders "oh so fun" children songs. My week is littered with nights of 3-5 hours of sleep. I've tried switching to a bi-phasic sleeping patter, but finding time for the nap in the afternoon is tough enough as is.

My own poker game is going great for the most part. I've taken down a few tournaments across random sites and am around 5k this month before staking and coaching. Seeing as I was insane busy these past few weeks with a concert, 3 family birthdays including my own, I really haven't played that much. I think i'll be refocusing my brain on cash games as I'm sure that is the only thing i'll have time for leading up to spring break. Coaching is going the best it ever has. I'm having more and more sessions where I feel like Morpheus unplugging Neo from the Matrix. Having those breakthrough sessions where you can hear a students brain turning across a skype call is what makes it worth it.

Vegas baby, that time is getting close. I'm going to get a bit ahead of myself here and post the house I'm really hoping me and my crew get. I hear back from the owner tomorrow to see if we can get it for the whole month of June.

Needless to say I'm pretty stoked about the series this year. So many people I still haven't met yet and so much grinding to be done. My former cash game coach said my game was definitely good enough for 5/10 live so I'm hoping i'll be able to spot some nice 10/20 games. Aside from a few events and possible cash spew, i'll probably focusing on my online game a lot getting ready for 2012. That's just tentatively speaking though. I'm going to be speaking with some graphic designers in the next week or two to get some SNGReasons hoodies ready for the series.

Good luck in March everyone and thanks for reading,

-Reasons

Awake My Soul

2011-01-13T05:16:00.002-06:00

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life

School is starting in one week I have quite the road to pave this coming semester. I had initially planned to take 18 hours this go around but, knowing myself, that wouldn't be the wisest choice. I don't have to rush though, there is simply no reason to. My girlfriend is a few semesters behind me at the moment and I intend on staying in Naca-Nowhere (Nacogdoches) until she finishes up.

My responsibilities as a poker player and musician seem to be growing exponentially over the months as I can confidently say that this will be busiest semester. Academically, I should be putting my senior recital above everything else. Combined with my orchestra music, this will be the most music I've ever had to learn in a semester (at least double). If only I can get my brain to agree with me on this one so I can put the practice in. Anyhow, I really have my heart set in being at nl400 asap. So i obviously moved more money to Merge so I can sit at 2/4 when I see fish sitting. I've been watching videos when I get the chance to so I can really start breaking down regs and exploiting them. Doing a lot of database analysis isn't something a SNG player is used, whether they should be or not. However, it is something a cash game player needs to use on a regular basis when wanting to move up.

I'll have pictures up of my apartment soon. Yes, the one that I have been in for currently 6 months. I just now feel that things are coming together so that I can actually invite friends over. I spent about $500 today buying random things like paint, trashcans, and other semi basic needs to make the place a bit nicer. I have a few more takes at home, then i'll be back at my place on Saturday finishing it up before this semester.

I feel very confident in my ability to play cash right now. I had a much needed session with my coach two days ago and it's the first time he saw me play nl200. Really the only thing with my game right now is getting down session flow and a solid mentality when playing. Right now there is huge gap between my A game and C game, and I think it's far to easy for me to get on my C game. Numerous times over the past few days, I've actually uttered the words out loud "whatever I'm on tilt, I call". It makes 0 sense from a $ point of view, but sometimes I can't help myself. Ive justified staying at a few tables while not feeling well solely because a fish, or just wanting to spite stack another reg. I have realized that when I am tilting, I'll start spewing to other regs at the table...which totally destroys the point of me sitting. This might come to a surprise as I've borderline prided myself in being quite tilt-less at the tables. However, cash games present a different type of tilt that aren't characteristic to sngs. It's hard for me to think exactly what it is sense it's 6am and I am almost nodding off, but I think it might be having negative emotions toward my opponent as a person. I pegged this this as one of my leaks in HU sngs was the fact that I just started develop a sense of animosity toward my opponents because you get so involved in them. Same thing in cash. I am spending so much time trying to out think who I am playing day in and day out with, I can let it get the better of me. I'm sure emotional control is always going to be a factor in any poker players career, I just need to put more emphasis on it than I have been doing these last few months.

I've had some realizations about personal health over these past few days that i'll probably jot down tomorrow, but I'm just too tired.

Listen to the song, it's one that can just give me the chills every time I listen to it.

Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Uno Dos

2011-01-08T22:28:00.004-06:00

Made the move up to nl200 6m and will be staying here.

My friend John made the move up a few days ago and we had a nice realization about what happens when we move up stakes.

Play like fish.

I managed to drop 1k in exactly 1 hour. 5 buy-ins is quite ridiculous even in a day. I had initially set my stop loss at 3 buy-ins, but was just a weee bit too tilted to stop playing. Really though, what happened(s) is I guess when one (me in particular) moves up, the fear of getting pushed around and outplayed is a massive factor. I was making thin calls and not giving people credit at all.

After having this "ah ha" moment, I went for a jog, took a shower, ate an apple, then was ready to play again.

As you can see, I got pretty juiced up on one table which was fun. I'm just a few $ shy of breakeven and plan to be finishing that out tonight. Overall I feel I have a very solid handle on the stakes and am anticipating being at nl400 by the end of the semester.

So yeah, my HEM is still messing up but I'm having a carbon guy do a teamview sesh with me in the next day or two so I can put up some pretty graphs, lol.

Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Onward

2011-01-02T02:26:00.002-06:00

The only excuse I can come up with for not posting in over a month is I wanted my last post to echo on for a little while. I haven't crunched any numbers yet, but I know 1.5-2k has been raised. I left for home mid December and just haven't really felt the urge to write. That, plus I have had quite a bit on my mind.

As usual, being home has been fantastic. Winter break is different though, as a lot of my friends are in town that I never get to see. The times in my life are now few and far between in which I communicate with real life friends more than online ones. I do love both, but I do have to balance my friending range obv....zing.

Having tremendous money swings these past few months combined with being around such loving people has really confirmed my attitude towards money; I'm rather apathetic. This is the time where everyone in the poker world is thinking of goals to meet, prop bets to motivate, and a long list of resolutions. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, I very much do the same thing most of the time. I think I've figured out why I don't really have that sick drive to make a lot of money this year though.

Getting rolled for 10k in one week and winning 25k in one day did absolutely nothing for my attitude toward life. Each situation is "bad" and "good" in their own regards, but neither greatly altered my life in any way particular. All of my good memories from this year have been times spent with my girlfriend, friends, and family. Admittedly, money does make things more enjoyable when spending it with others, but fancy watches don't really make me any happier, so what's the point.

Focusing on the people I love in my life, making the world a better place through poker, and the drive to share my love for music with others, is what drives me. I've never been a proponent of new years resolutions. I believe that if someone has to wait until a certain date to better their life, they weren't serious about it in the first place and will fail. Self respect and love for others is what should motivate. Money does not buy happiness, it is merely a tool that should be used for the necessities and the betterment of others.

I'm anticipating great things to happen this year and I can only wish the same for you.

-Ben

Poker Gives Back, take three...

2010-12-01T23:56:00.024-06:00

Current amount raised= $1110

5 players pledging 10% of December and January profits.

Hey guys, I'm happy to finally be setting a project up like this again as it's been far too long. You all have been fantastic in helping with my friends Amy and Sara in the past, and I hope this situation is no different.

A lot of you blog or talk about how poker is really unfulfilling (I agree) and want to do other things with it. My friend Monica is doing work for the betterment of the world at her own cost. I can't really speak for you all because I don't know everyone here but that is certainly more then I have ever done.

Monica has a heart for serving others and is making it her goal in life to make the world a better place. She has a blog of her own so i'll just let that do the talking...

"Dear friends and family members,

I have always had a heart for serving others, and thanks to my parents, church, and school, I have had many opportunities to do so in the past. I firmly believe that throughout the world people are united as children of God in the human family. This conviction has lead me to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of North Texas. While attending UNT my passion for issues of human rights has grown with my education. In the coming fall I will begin attending graduate school to earn an advanced degree in psychology for the purposes of providing therapy for refugees, displaced populations, and survivors of human rights violations. I will also conduct research in the home countries of these populations to better foster post trauma recovery and growth. In order to tailor my graduate studies to this specific cause, I need practical experience working first hand with these populations, preferably in other parts of the world.

This brings me to the purpose of this letter. I have been accepted for an international voluntary internship with a nonprofit organization, The Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD), which will place me in Jinja, Uganda (located in East Africa) for close to five months. The purpose of my internship will be to work closely with a grassroots organization to develop specific programming to promote sustainable community development. This experience will be a dream come true for me as I have wanted to work in Uganda since high school. In addition to working with a specific organization, I will also attend training sessions put on by FSD to learn how to write grants, conduct needs assessments, and be exposed to specific methods and difficulties in promoting sustainable development at the grassroots level. I will also be living in a house with a local family, where I will share meals, daily routines, and hopefully build lasting relationships.

I am thrilled about the opportunity to share my strengths with this community and learn about developing communities in a manner that encourages future growth. I will most likely be working in a social work setting with people living with HIV/AIDS, so the skills I will learn and the experiences I will have will directly contribute to my ability to provide holistic treatment and therapy for clients in the future. But because it is a voluntary internship with a nonprofit, there is a considerable cost for the program. I will be arriving in Uganda February 26 and staying until mid June. $8,000 will cover the costs of my flight, in country transportation, three meals a day as well as other living expenses, and training sessions. $200 of this will also go directly to the organization I will be working with as seed money for sustainable program development."

-Monica

The amount of money for the trip is quite a hefty sum. Given that we have 2.5 months to come up with the money, I think a goal of 3-4k is very appropriate.

I've already scheduled a benefit tournie on-

Pokerstars

December 16th

Tid- 337436718

$20

Password: Monica. (uppercase M)

Participants will be expected to donate at least half of tournie winnings to the cause.

Pledging a % of monthly profits is a great way to help out.

If you do just want to donate, ship to reasons14 on stars/fulltilt and hit me up on skype/leave a comment etc.

I'll be announcing what I am doing as far as private coaching soon as well. We already have quite a few donators to the cause. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all can do with this. Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Kylemillion- $150

Piratos14- $150

wbmustang- $100

bigloser2448 - $50+ 10% of profits in December and January

Eljay42- $50

yodaddy379- $50

MattGeer- $50

yomo20- $50+ 10% of profits in December and January

Bretty12345- $40

Rpeterson36- $25

mcc3504- $25

xboxlucas- 10% of profits in December and January

Lynzeb- 10% of profits in December and January

Reasons14- $250+ 10% of profits in December and January

Lesmit- Pending

Mrpaintball- pending

Bigbluffzinc- pending

Thankful

2010-11-26T02:09:00.002-06:00

A day after I found out that Larry18ths stole from me, I received multiple texts from fellow friends/investors informing that a bigger name player from parttimepoker.com rolled the site for 22k. He owes me 6k. After darting around the world wide web trying to confirm the validity of the unwanted news, I could only manage a blank stare at the ceiling for a solid minute letting everything sink in. I don't register for the highest buy-ins and I most certainly don't sit in the toughest games, but my mind has been numbed to various degrees over this past year through lots of life experience in this game of Unlimited Texas Hold Them.

Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger...right?

I've always been extremely apt to figure out why a poker player's brain reacts to the situations he or she encounters on a daily basis. As a backer, loss aversion is number one on my list of psychological foe's that need to be conquered in my head. In short, that is the leading reason why winning poker players don't want to put in the proper amount of time and volume. The fear of future losses is often more daunting then the actual loss itself. Think of the last time you had a losing session. I can promise you that you weren't as pissed off an hour after your session then when you were right in the middle of it. Whatever point i'm trying to get to with this, is that I find it interesting that I have had an abnormal lack of negative emotion toward this situation despite the large sum of money that has been stolen from me.

The "thief" said he would be in contact with me on a regular basis; that he would work really hard on paying me back. I have yet to talk to him since that day he stole. I live three hours away from him and almost split a car ride with him to Vegas this year. For those of you who don't know who he is, it's not hard to figure out. However, I don't feel that bashing him on this blog is going to accomplish much as there is some small part of me believing he will make good. Maybe I'm being naive.

More cold turkey on the menu this month.

I've never written about it in this blog unlike some of my other peers, and I feel rather hesitant to write about it now. I don't remember when exactly, but sometime around the middle of my freshman year I got the notion that taking adderall would be a good idea.

My alarm goes off at 9:00am. After swiping the snooze on my iphone multiple times, I merge out of bed to go get a smoothie at 11:00am. I would make my own, but grocery shopping and washing dishes are just a few minor setbacks keeping me from doing so as of late. While unlocking my apartment door, I simultaneously remember that I should have taken my adderall if I want to get to bed at a decent hour. Well, not my adderall, but the stuff I bought from my friend. Two hours ago would have been good actually. Still not optimal, but good. Oh what the hell I take it anyway. Coaching was awesome on it. Sure I may stutter more but I feel I get through to my student a lot better. Fastfoward the clock to 4am and i'm still talking to my friends. Life tilted at the situation because I know I have class in a few hours, I opt to just stay up 30+ hours to do a sleep schedule reset that works oh- so-well. My day is miserable and I am completely unproductive.

Seems pretty counter productive doesn't it? Take a substance to help you focus one day, only to mess it up the next. The above story hasn't been a rare case in my experience with it. The exact instance I wrote about just now happened two weeks ago actually. After some discussion and self-realization, I went to the trash and poured out the pills I got my hands on not to long ago. Part of me wanted to just finish them then call it quits after. We both know how effective saying you are going on a new diet after you stuff yourself at Thanksgiving too. It just doesn't happen. I could give them to my friends? Well if I shouldn't be doing it, then I wouldn't be a good friend if I have it to them either. After sitting back at my computer, I went back into my kitchen to throw out my trash...just to make sure.

Relying on a substance to focus when one (me specifically) does not have their life in order isn't the key. If I can't get it together without a pill, then a pill is just going to make it worse. I didn't take this stuff on a regular basis. I just felt that it soon could become a heavy psychological addiction, and defiantly not into letting something else have control of me. I haven't taken it in a few weeks and don't plan on taking it again.

Being home has been nothing short of fantastic. I've had a ton to eat, watched tv for multiple hours, and not logged on skype the entire day; three things that I don't normally do. I finally got the chance to write too as I've been craving an update for a while. I actually got the idea to write a book the other day. I most likely won't end up following through, but I do want to write more so on a regular basis.

Will I ever get to the main focus of what I intend to write about in any of my posts? I always write ramble for too long before jotting down my thoughts about the initial subject, then I go to bed.

Despite the good, the bad, and the variance as of late, I am beyond thankful for everything I have. I am blessed with so much love from my family, friends, and girlfriend. I am thankful for my teachers that share their knowledge with me and I am thankful for my students who probably motivate me more than I do them.

And again, thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Cold Turkey

2010-10-29T13:50:00.005-05:00

To say the least, this month has been very introspective, trying, and hopefully a productive time of my life. To cap it all off, I came into an agreement with my cash game coach last night that I'll be staked and coached by him. I wish I can say that I had the mental fortitude to work at it on my own right now, but the facts are that I had purchased 10 hours of coaching in January and still have some time left. Realizing that I was once coached and staked in Sngs, I am seeing that it is probably the best way I will learn cash. It has been so easy for me to just sit at the computer and prop my feet up, only to just 3 barrel bluff away some stacks 15 minutes into the session. I'm receiving 3 hours of coaching a week while playing on someone else's roll. I have too much respect than to just mess around when someone else is investing time and money into me.

Regarding my personal coaching, I believe it is constantly improving. I purchased some hours from faarcyde and braminc, two sicko sng players that are instructors at cardrunners, so I could further improve my game and get some new coaching ideas. Having them look over some of my 6m and 9m hands has been very enlightening to my stt and mtt sng game. I learned some new concepts that I am excited to relay onto my own personal students that I actually hadn't put too much thought in myself before some of our sessions.

Adding those two things above causes me to feel very vulnerable. It was about this exact time last year I was thinking about making a push for Super Nova with 50k vpps to go. November had been my best month to date, so I stopped. Typical me. 2010, I have kept a solid pace the entire year, often placing prop bets so I achieve this goal. Now I am simply shrugging it aside and hopefully moving on to better things. (i'm not playing cash on pokerstars). I thought about putting a big grind in this coming December, but would it be just to lose my stars in January? I'll still be playing some sngs to keep up with everything since I know that no one really wants to learn from a player who doesn't play the games. I'll have a better point of view on my future in about 6 months I'd say when I see how cash is going. I effectively told my cash game coach to kick my ass into gear, and he said he would do so.

School is so up in the air right now. It's been excuse after excuse combined with a legitimate busy schedule. I told myself I would practice one hour of violin before any poker this past week, but obviously I got sick after our concert. Take two on that goal this week. I'm dropping my astronomy class. No, failing it actually. I stopped going in anticipation to drop it, but I missed the date for that. Now, I can either retake to get the fail off of my grade, or just take a different science like I intended too but keep the failing grade. I don't really plan on using my degree, like I have stated numerous times, so I'll probably just take biology at some point. Given my new scheduale change, I have my Tuesday and Thursday mornings free in which i'll be using to do yoga. Whether I'll graduate this coming spring or summer, I'm not really sure. In the big spectrum of things, it's not a huge deal.

A rather disappointing event happened this week. I found out I was getting rolled for 2,500 from some playing from Poland. His handle on ftp is Lary18thS. Me and Lynzeb both staked him for a running roll of 5k only to find out that he is now involved in rolling someone else for 7k, and was trying to roll someone else after that. I don't want to really get too in depth about it right now, but you can read more about it here

So yeah, a big thank you to all those honest players out in the business. It's quite frustrating to have to deal with people being ignorant toward the game as a whole. Dishonest people just continue to wreck that image further.

Good luck for those of you grinding in this home stretch of 2010. As always, thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Gross

2010-10-09T14:26:00.002-05:00

Swings are nasty sometimes, why cant variance be more consistent?. I've racked up a ton of vpps for the month so far so that should help with the stress level the rest of the month as far as getting volume in goes. Having more time for school, music, friends etc, should help a lot as I feel I've fallen behind in all of those areas.

Im about to pack up and leave for the weekend to visit my family which should be a sigh of relief from the beginning of the month. I did almost ship my PCA seat last night, was CL of a 33r for about 2 hours than busted j9>AJ two tables left. I'm hoping to ship one so we can have a repeat of this last one which was a blast. Cant decide if I should try via steps or just the rebuy satts, both maybe?

That yoga situation got sorted out from the last week. There had been some communication error so the instructor thought the time was at 7:00. Overall, I really enjoyed and will be going back. Sort of comical because the instructor told me not to spend 50/hour on a lesson again because she felt bad. I feel it was extremely worth it and will prob have a few more priv lessons before joining some of the classes. Even though one isn't doing that much cardio work or using weights, it was pretty sick how sore my muscles were the next day. I've only practiced a few stretches between then and now, and don't even have a mat yet. I need to pick it up though because I feel very focused and relaxed whenever I finish.

Right, so i'm going to try and just write whenever topics get on my mind because I feel a lot of my recent posting has been very sub par.

Have a good one,

-Ben

Tilted

2010-09-28T19:42:00.002-05:00

Right, so I'm trying to do all these things to stay focused/relaxed/improve my overall well being.... which includes me scheduling some private yoga lessons as I mentioned in my last post.

I roll up to the studio a few minutes before my lesson was scheduled for, like I was asked, and no one is there.

I'm behind in my poker playing, have a concert this week I have to practice for, and have my own students to coach. I've been pumped for this yoga lesson since it was scheduled, now it's just turned into a sheer waste of time which is absolutely infuriating. I'm not sure what I am going to do concerning future lessons from this instructor as the thought of learning how to de-stress/relax from the very person that has pissed me off seems extremely hard to do. I'm probably going to email the other instructor to see if she has any open slots so I don't have to deal with the current one.

I actually feel legitimately angry right now, something I haven't felt in a long time. Animosity might be a better word actually.

I know it was probably a simple mistake, but come on, act professional or something. This person has no idea who I am, but I cant help but take it personal right now.

School has been going on for a month and I haven't hung out with one of my friends here. I'll be doing so tonight, then back to it when I get home.

I'm not one to listen to rap much, but I've been listening to this while grinding and have taken quite a liking to it. I know it's sort of old school, but it's refreshing in a sense that it's not cliche like every other rap song on the scene right now.

Done with my rant.

Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Achieving Flow

2010-09-18T23:14:00.002-05:00

The days of smoke filled rooms, whiskey, cheeseburgers,and late nights are gone. I think the new-school poker players- the ones who are dominating the games today- are players who look very different. They're younger, leaner, and more focused on improving their physical and mental health - and they are crushing the games

- Daniel Negreanu

I really hate to be gone another weekend, but it's for my mother's birthday so I can manage.

Not sure why, but I miscalculated and saw that only one weekend is left this month. I don't even have 3k vpps and this month's goal was 10k. I recently decided that I'm just going to be playing weekends and maintain my status that way due to school and coaching obligations. The games are the softest on the weekend anyway. I guess it's just going to be another cram trying to get the 5k vpps I need to scrape by this month.

I finished reading "Peak Performance Poker" this weekend and must say the idea's in it have had a huge impact on me. Author Travis Steffen didn't say too many new things that I wasn't aware of, but he sort of laid out nutrition, exercise, and diet, in such a way that it directly applies to poker and how it affects our game. Funny how I can hear that I should take fish oil pills because they're healthy, not do it, then take them because I realize how it is going to improve my poker game. The key to everything in balance. One might think I have achieved a good sense of it after writing about for a few years, but it's still a working progress. Really though, I feel that making these plus ev changes will help me focus, improve organization, manage my time better, which all translates to me succeeding in music and poker. I emailed a yoga instructor this evening so I can hopefully get some private lessons. None of the beginner classes they had to affer fit my sched, so I am hoping this will suffice for the time being. I know I don't need anything more om my plate that take up more time, but right now I think this will help me get more focused and am pretty excited about it.

Pretty interesting song. The Beatles actually gave this song away to Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. I heard Billy's version today in a restaurant and forgot how much I loved this song. I used listen to nothing but 50s-70s when I was younger. So much crap put our these days, nice to hear something refreshing.

My apartment is close to being done. My table is in and I think my dad is going to bring it up sometime next week. Sad to say it, but I haven't even hung out with my friends in Nacogdoches one time since school has started up. Me finally having a table will be a nice excuse to invite everyone over and hopefully relax a bit. Aside from th able, I think I'll focus on getting the walls painted and my paintings hung etc. I have yet to select a desk, but I can actually work quite effectively with my walmart $60 one right now and am in no immediate hurry to get a new one. I might just wait until December when I actually have more time to think.

I've been studying the nine mans a bit more due to time constraints. I've watched some videos recently from everything to 16-109 buy ins and think i'll be just fine. If my roi at 18s is in the mid teens, surely I can manage a 5% roi at a $27 9 man imo. I was able to manage a 1-2% roi at a 109 9 man, that would be fantastic. I'm sure the variance would be sick, but adding those to my rep for Elite would make a world of difference.

Good luck on the grind,

-Reasons

The Way We Get By

2010-09-11T00:53:00.005-05:00

We go out in stormy weather
We rarely practice discern.

School has come around full circle and I can say, with confidence, I am the busiest I have ever been in my life. With poker and school/music combined, I am putting in 16 hour work days back to back and I just got a new load of work in.

Historically, I've only throughly learned one solo piece per semester for my entire school career. Due to the fact that my senior recital is next semester and I have produce one hour of music, I'll be learning 3 pieces/semester. I somehow managed to miss my first lesson this semester too. Luckily, me and my lesson teacher are tight and she knows I make those mistakes on accident. Me and my girlfriend got assigned to the same quartet which is pretty awesome. I'll be adding that to my senior recital list which should be awesome. Here is the what we'll be playing...

My procrastination hit the positive side of life variance these past few weeks though. Instead of signing up for classes a few months before like a good student is supposed to, I waited a few days before school started. Now this obviously resulted in a few of my classes being closed that I wanted/needed. One of my classes that I needed, brass methods II, started at 8am in the morning and just so happed to be closed. I subconsciously avoided messing with the class until the last day for class changes was about, hoping that I could get away with no 8am classes my first week. I emailed the processor requesting that I would be allowed into his class because I needed to take it so that I could graduate in the spring. All my classes start at 11:100am this whole semester, waking up to the tuba and trombone at 8am was going to be quite meh. I go to see the professor during his office hours the next day and I am presently surprised. Apparently I am not the only one who has had this problem so he is teaching a special problems brass methods class on Friday afternoon at 2pm . The class meets once and a week and I full credit is given. My first class schedule during the week remains at 11am. Ship it.

Now this isn't to say I'm not waking up early to get things done. I've been waking up at 8:30 on a regular basis and fitting in one hour of coaching each morning + answering emails and doing hh reviews. You can call it my office hours I suppose. I hope this busy sched is a blessing in disguise as I'm not really sure how I am going to get all the volume in that I want. I really wish that my December won't by my butt glued to an office chair making up for lost time. I'll be loading the higher buy ins, even when I don't want to, so I can cut back on the time being played. I would start posting screen shots of my recent "heater" so to speak, but I don't want to get cocky. I can just say that it looks like I went deep in an MTT at the end of my graph right now, cept that it's just 18s. 2.2k vpps this month so far. I'll be home the last two weekends of this month which will hopefully give me some time to catch up on some much needed rest, volume, and friends.

I think I had some irrational thoughts about my poker career this afternoon that sort of relate to what I was saying earlier about moving up stakes. I stumbled upon some 2p2 post asking whether someone has played 100k sngs in a year. Naturally, solid grinders like the_venitian, spacegravy, and sippin_criss where brought up. For some reason or another, the low stakes grinders were getting berated for not moving etc. Obviously, it was because they had family, kids, rent, and other obligations to take care of. Not that I don't have my own bills to take care of, but nothing to that degree. Someone chimes in that they are willing to bet that all of the high stakes sickos are young and single. This is going to look quite retarded and illogical on my part (slight brag mixed in though too)

Yeah, that's correct, $4/game at the higher buy ins. Still working on clearing my mental state as I really shouldn't be playing as many 16s as I do still. The swing's really don't affect me because of the amount I have in my roll either. Feel free to yell at me when you talk to me next. It'l probably help.

My physical condition is rather poor. I went to Austin last weekend and had a fantastic time with my friend/student, Acskate. 6th street was a little too fun and I came down with a cold that I am just now getting over. I guess I've more/less used that as an excuse for no running this week. But other than that, I'll say that I'm in the worst physical condition that I've been in while. I'm not out of shape by the "hey-im-fat-lets-take-the-elevator-to-the-second-floor-" american standard (I saw that two days ago actually). I am more so out of shape to my own standard. I've been good about stretching, but I really need to be putting in the time to go for a jog constantly throughout the week.

I have to vent about school one more time before I'm done writing for the night. I have to sit in retarded astronomy class and learn what longitude and latitude, while I could be practicing, coaching, or playing. I have to go to some ridiculous evening lab and learn about significant figures (something I learned in 7th grade), while I could be coaching for $100/hour. Done with the school rant for now, thanks :)

My eyes are getting weary and I'm supposed to head out of town tomorrow to see some of my best friends I haven't seen in months actually. I'm very much looking forward to it as these people were pretty much my highschool crew.

And that's the way we get by to
Way we get by
And that's the way we get by to
Way we get by to
Way
And that's the way we get by
That's the way we get by

-Reasons

New Place, School, Results

2010-09-01T14:23:00.003-05:00

Looking at my targets for this month that I posted, I came up a little short. I might be disappointed if it was because I was lazy but that wasn't really the case. I had a lot of life stuff come up that prevented me from being online a lot the later 3rd of the month and it still turned out fine.

Between, coaching, staking, playing, and some random drumming gig I got, I profited about 8k on the month. I also moved into a new place, started my senior year, and am managing to still enjoy life.

I have yet to decide on new desk, so i bought some $60 cheap one at Wal-Mart that will suffice for the time being. It took me like 2 hours to build the freakin thing and seeing as I don't do much physical labor, I'm quite proud. The uneven monitor set up isn't really all that bad like you would think. I've adjusted my table layout to just play on the lower monitor and I think it actually helps me focus better.

I have 35.2k vpps to go on the year for Super Nova which should be fine. I wouldn't be surprised if I fell somewhat short come December time, but I have about that whole later half of the month to make up for it. Really though, about 9k vpps/month for the rest of the year should be fine. Starting next year with 42% rakeback is really going to help the bottom line.

I am quite proud of myself. I didn't touch my violin nearly as much as I should have this summer, but still squeezed out 4th chair in the first violin section. The music for this concert doesn't seem to be that hard which will give me extra time to focus on my senior recital coming up this spring. I'll probably be practice 7-10 hours a week which is a huge change from this summer, but those hours neeeed to be put in so I do a decent job.

This is our opening piece for this upcoming concert. We might be taking it a few beats slower, but it's a very exciting song none the less.

I got my scheduling messed up this semester, but I think I can make it work. As of right now, all my classes start at 11am onward which is fantastic. Looking at the courses I need to take, I need to reg for a brass methods 2 course. This is beyond a bad beat for sure. Not only will I probably never teach anyone how to play these instruments, but I have to wake up to the tuba and trombone every morning :( I guess since I have such a big time gap in between my 8am and 11am, I'll just use to get work done whether it be playing, coaching, or practicing.

I feel my thought process in my writing isn't as focused during the day so I'm gunna call it a post.

Goals this month-

7k Profit

Do good in school (vague but w.e)

10k vpp

5k hands of cash

8 hours week/coaching

Run 3x/week

I'll have a new post up within a few days. Been getting a lot of kind words about the blog lately, so thank you to all my readers.

-Ben Reason

Well wuduya know....

2010-08-18T04:25:00.003-05:00

So if anyone wants a testament on how doing plus life ev things can affect your poker game, take a gander at my graph. I don't really want to post it yet as I'll have a nice pretty one at the end of the month, but my stats this far have been pretty sick.

I haven't missed a day of running, and have been eating relatively healthy aside from one trip to Whataburger with a friend. I'm so sick focused and zero'd in when I am playing it's ridic. Looking through my hand histories, one can see a huge change in my style of play and I love it.

For some reason me and a few friends were talking about our grind station set up today so I just thought I'd take a look back because I remembered a picture I took a while back.

Freshman year grinding the 1 dollar sngs, even .01/.02 LIMIT (click the pic to see full view)

Grinding 16s-60s and some nl100...

Thought the contrast was a bit funny and certainly nice/entertaining to reflect on.

Anyways, I'll be out of town for the mext few days at my girlfriends. We're hitting up a Jack Johnson concert then I'm moving into a single bedroom apartment when I get back. This weekend, she'll be staying with me and my parents at my home which is a first, but def looking forward to it. I don't see my self getting in some hands for the next 5 days which is ashame because I'm so focused right now but whatever. Real live > online obv.

I haven't picked out a mattress for my bed yet which I'll have to do last minute, and I've also managed to procrastinate ordering a new desk (getting rid of current one). It'l be a mess to get everything reorganized again, but will def be way solid when it gets done.

Short post, but I just wanted to get something out before I'm gone in a few days and don't get the chance. Thanks for reading as always,

-Reasons

Tune Up

2010-08-13T05:30:00.003-05:00

"Every one of us, unconsciously, works out a personal philosophy of life, by which we are guided, inspired, and corrected, as time goes on. It is this philosophy by which we measure out our days, and by which we advertise to all about us the man, or woman, that we are. . . . It takes but a brief time to scent the life philosophy of anyone. It is defined in the conversation, in the look of the eye, and in the general mien of the person. It has no hiding place. It's like the perfume of the flower ? unseen, but known almost instantly. It is the possession of the successful, and the happy. And it can be greatly embellished by the absorption of ideas and experiences of the useful of this earth."

-George Matthew Adams

Have a lot to catch up on as I haven't updated in a few days and not quite sure where to start. Most importantly, I've come to some reoccurring conclusions about poker, mindset, and life in general, that are in dire need of being fixed.

I had a pretty relaxing night with with my friends and actually got outside for a while too. Having not done much of either this summer, I would say it was an appropriate activity for what was going to follow. The Perseids Meteor shower was this evening which is by far one of the most consistent ones of the year. We saw quite a few solid meteors throughout peak of the shower which was about midnight. The skies were clear and it was just a great night sitting around and talking with friends.

I fired up a session of poker around 4am while listening to some new podcasts that Qeloton reminded me of that I hadn't listened to in a while. I recommend Tommy Angelo's series on DeucesCracked rather frequently to my students to help them with their overall mindset concerning poker. I also listen to these when I am on some form of tilt myself. A new two part series came out featuring Travis Steffen entitled "Poker Health".

"This Week: Bart Hanson and guest Travis Steffen continue to discuss poker health including, alcohol, exercise, and other things that affect our health as poker players. "

Just the thing I've been needing to listen to as I've done absolutely horrid at my overall health as of late. My sleep pattern as been beyond sporadic, eating habits atrocious, and my mind set not completely their each session I play. Throughout the course of my poker career, I've always reminded myself of how important those variables are in one's life to be successful and even blogged about it from time to time. Looking back at my stats from Sept 09 -Dec 09, they are about 2x better then what they are now as far as 16/18s go. I've come to the conclusion that these weakened statistics are completely linear with my overall mental/health state, or lack thereof. Reading my past blogs and just thinking how my mindset was, I can say that I had heaps more focus than I do now.

Repetition is the key to a lot of things in life. It's the key to learning, revision, and even the major element in Beethoven's 5th Symphony. Plain and simple, repetition is most commonly found in success. Sit-n-go's are a game of repetition even. I need more of this sweet reception in my life.

I'm going to wake up tomorrow and go run in the blazing 100 degree heat to sort of purge myself of all these mental and physical errors. Eating right, running on a regular basis, sleep habits, and I guess you can throw getting some sunlight in the mix, are the physical things in which I've failed at very badly recently. My eating habits have been me eating 1-2 meals a day, just medium size. This is obviously horrid on so many levels as I think it's best for one to have 5 small meals through the course of the day rather then 3, much less two, large ones. It hasn't even been healthy food. Just pure junk is all. After some coaching and playing, I'm going to run again just for some emphasis on the situation. I'm hoping this will be the start of a better sleep habit as the school year starts, especially since I might have some 8am classes. That's probably not best thing considering it's 6:30am now.

Pre-game routine is always highly encouraged in sports. Athletes do it before every game as will I before every session. I'd say this is subject to change, but as of right now my pre session warm-up is the following-

Cleanup work space if needed

Review 2 of my own hand histories.

Review 2 student's hand histories.

Stretch for 10 minutes.

Right now I'm tentatively planning on taking up yoga. It's been recommended to me from violin and poker teaches alike. The thought of me actually stretching for 10 minutes seems rather absurd at the movement. I'm not even sure if my soccer stretch routine in highschool was 10 minutes. I haven't the slightest clue how to get started in yogo but I'm sure there are some decent youtube vids to help me out.

Mental wind down, I have none. I think this is something that I need to factor in to my day even though it might seem difficult at first. Right now I make zero time for my personal leisure, hanging out with friends, or just doing nothing so I an pick something to do later. I guess I can compile a lists of books, movies, games, and other things that I consider to be "plus life EV", and give myself some time for mental rest during the day. I should also give myself some mental wind own before I go to bed. I've heard it be detrimental to fall asleep shortly after you get off of the computer. Something that I've been doing for the last few years probably. 5 minutes of stretching and 10 minutes of reading will do.

My diet has consisted of fastfood, subway, smoothies, and random restaurant visits with friends these past few weeks. I think an immediate change will be drinking 8 glasses of water a day and maybe add fruits and vegetables back to the payroll. I think It's going to take me some time to sort out my diet for 5 smaller meals a day, but I know I can make some good changes to it right now regardless.

I have a good bit more that I want to write about, but I'm afraid it'l steal some focus for what I've written above. I'm really looking forward to these new changes though. I'm way fortunate to be blessed with an amazing girlfriend, friends, and family. No, I didn't win anything crazy, but I just feel that I should acknowledge them for some reason. Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Break

2010-08-06T05:57:00.002-05:00

I need a break. I'm going to be out of town this weekend which is very much needed. My laptop is doing that blue screen of dead thing which isn't surprising as I've taken awful care of it.

I did 4 or 5 hours of coaching today which was great, but it really affected my volume. I don't really mind though. I'm sort of rethinking how this month is going to be. Getting in some work on my cash games sounds like a possibility and would make sense going into school this month. Only problem is my winrate thus far in cash games is 10/hour last time I checked and I'm not even going to think about grinding on that. Maybe i'll do cash the rest of the month and go to sngs if that's a bust. This probably won't happen, i'm just rambling now. I've tried to keep this blog number and stats free, but I just can't help it right now. I don't want to force my venting to anyone, just getting it down feels better and for you all that want to read, you are more than welcome to. Speaking of, thanks to all who are consistent readers and give me compliments on the blog. It def gives me motivation.

360 $1 $18 9% $403

Yeah I know its not that bad, just frustrating. I need to kick up the volume. Back to it hard on Monday.

-Reasons

Double Click

2010-08-05T11:26:00.002-05:00

Another good day yesterday. I'm hoping it's no coincidence that I had a massive day at the same point I feel my game has changed for the better. I'm not going to go into specific detail as to what it is since a lot of other 18 man grinders read this though.

Anyways, I think my internal clock might be reset which would be awesome. I went out with some friends last night and ended up going to bed earlier (like 2-3am) and woke up at 9:30am ish. Just two nights ago I was going to BED at 9:30am and waking up at 3pm. No doubt i'll probably revert back to the same thing before school starts, but it's nice to be in some normal state a long with the rest of the world lol.

I had a pretty sick schedule lined up this first week, but it's cleared out a bit. I'm not able to see my girlfriend this week so i'll just be using that for extra study time and coaching. It's nice to feel that I can breath a bit since I don't get that all to often.

I'm really liking that wrist brace I got a few days ago. I feel that my arm isn't hurting as bad as it used to. I also increased the sensitivity in my mouse which was super annoying at first, but I don't have to use my wrist as much anymore which is great.

Hopefully getting a lot of volume today and a few hours of coaching.

-Reasons

Click

2010-08-04T07:20:00.002-05:00

Click,
the sound of something going off in my brain. I think I get it now.

I'm not really sure as I've played one set with my new mindset, but it certainly felt different. Over the past few weeks I've been going over hand histories with quite a few players whom I respect at least to a certain degree, and I think maybe something is clicking. Right now i'm really starting to think my game has actually changed for the worse, despite my assumption that I have been playing well. After playing just now, I feel like I've grasped to my playing style a few months ago, something which was working very well.

276 $2 $17 6% $530

I only played 50 games which was under my initial goal for the day, but the latter part of my week has changed a bit and I actually have more time. Also, turbo night ran tonight which seems to happen sporadically and will always lower my volume due to mtts. I was able to give myself that 1x a month reminder why I loath 180 mans.

Interesting scenario arose tonight. My good friend bigbluffzinc made it to the final table of one of the $27 turbos that ran tonight along with mcc3504 and golfprouva, all three being 18 man grinders whom I play with every day. (you can find both of their blogs on my list). I was on a skype call with bigbluff and his internet went down whilst 4 handed. The other reg at the table, pokercancer, busted and the three 18 manners were left to go at it. I know it's very standard in heads up sngs for one player to sit out if the opponents internet goes down so should it not be the same in a MTT? We play with each other every day and I'd thing have some level of degree of respect for one another. Few have mentioned how this is a very classless act for this involved and I really can't help but agree. Regardless, congrats on the score guys.

I have at least 3 hours of coaching scheduled for tomorrow as well as 100 games i'll be grinding out. My sleeping pattern is beyond messed up, it's about 8am and I might just grab a bite before bed lol.

I think I'm the only sng player I know who is the least results oriented. I don't check my roll for weeks at time which is huge contrast to those who check their cashier mid sesh. I guess sharkscoping myself over these past few days is a weird change of pace. I might actually start looking at my roll at the start and finish of the day. I like it, the actually number in my cashier is the lowest it has been in a while because I staked out quite a bit of money this past week. All this purchasing, staking, and breakeven-ing has got me quite motivated. I'm ready to get after it tomorrow.

-Benjamin

Truckin

2010-08-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

Month so far

227 $1 $18 4% $114

Was up around $450 at some point then played a horrible sesh.

Proud of my volume though and I think i'm playing great. Would like to see some tides turn though.

Change of plans, was going to go out of town tomorrow (technically today I guess), but that's getting pushed back. I'll plan for 100 games today and do some running, coaching, and cleaning. Will be a nice change of pace from the volume the past few days, even though it's not killer or anything.

I'm going to 18 table in sets tomorrow to ensure maximum focus. I think at some point today I had 25 tables up, which i'm trying to avoid.

Ridiculously tired.

-Ben

Shoot Down The Stars

2010-08-02T06:41:00.004-05:00

2.5 years ago, I asked thelipofund what he does for motivation when he runs bad.

"I just buy a lot of stuff so I need to play"

I've spend around 4k this weekend so far on furniture. It's pretty nice stuff and should last me quite a long time. I'm stoked about finally getting it all set up. I'll probably spend about 2k more on my desk and other accessories. needless to say, i'm way focused right now.

edit, pic didn't come out right, but w/e i'll leave it and fix it later.

Day 1

75 games [x]

85 $0 $20 3% $8

I won $ at every stake except for the 27s in which I got murdered. Whatever, at least I made money and am feeling pretty good about my game at the moment.

I'm going by waking hours here considering the days. I technically didn't start grinding until 2am I don't think. Back at the apartment at 9:30 and coached for a few hours. I scoped quite a few grinders last night with each varying in skill level. Everyone has the swings...I was giving myself a mental pep talk I guess. I'm so motivated to crush this month right now. First day, clean slate, feels nice.

Was gong to get a gel pad for my arm. It's been hurter after a day or two of really hard playing. I considering switching to an x-box controller more and more, but I just feel that it would hinder my game and cause it to by a little to systematic. We'll see if this wrist brace helps a bit.

-Reasons

Weird Month, Glad To Move On.

2010-07-31T22:29:00.003-05:00

Pretty awkward month poker-wise and i'm most certainly glad it's over. For some reason I don't want to look at my stats, i'm staying as detached from them as possible right now. I'm proud of of my volume though as it hasn't been the greatest in the past, but quite disappointed in my results. Numerous times throughout the month, I felt as I have been playing the best poker I ever have, and it's frustrating when the results don't come. Most know me as one who never tilts, and that's true for the most part. I've even been told I should be a life coach at some point. I agree that I have a pretty solid mindset when playing, but this month I found my slamming my fist down on at least two occasions.

Realistically, it all makes sense. I've run somewhat decent since November in 09 when I decided to really turn up the burners on my poker career. After staring up at the ceiling for a while after another horrible session this month, I found myself searching for some decent articles regarding tilt control. I've read books and listened to podcasts over the issue, but I needed something else right then. After sifting through a million cliche articles, I stumbled across one on a site that I go to everyday, parttimepoker. Though the article was somewhat basic, it's really what I needed to read as I had fallen into some bad habits.

I've always pounded volume pretty hard when running bad. Multiple times have I increased my number of games played at a time to 30-35 when I know I should just be playing 18-24. I know this isn't the answer as my focus quickly dwindles and my brain isn't able to sustain thinking at all. I really need to get rid of the "wtf/fu I call" spots that this causes as well. I'll just be setting the number of games i'll be playing each day and sticking to it. No more spite loading the pokerstars RNG because I ran bad. I'll have something else to do because my workload just seems to be forever replenishing anyway.

2k games this month, can I do it? I'm going to be super busy the latter half of the month because of school starting up and my heaving increase of coaching coming up. I don't even think i've played 2k/month anyways period. I've been disgustingly motivated regardless of the variance and am going to shoot for it though.

1st -75 games

2nd -150 games

3rd- 0

4th-75

5th- 150

6th- 200

7th- 0

8th- 0

9th- 200

10th - 200

11th- 100

12th- 100

13th- 200

14th- 100

15th- 50

16th- 100

17th-22nd- 0

23- 100

24-200

25- 0

26- 0

27- 50

28- 0

29-0

30- 0

31st- 75

Ok since I was talking about it, figured i'd just map out how I planned on getting this all done playing wise. Most of those days will have practicing my violin, coaching, and running packed into it. I paced it so that I'd have slightly over 2k by the end of the month so that if I have a kink on one of my days, the other day will pick up. I might make some adjustments and add some volume earlier on in the month because the latter part is going to be when I move into my new apartment. I'm helping my girlfriend move into her place the 25th, then we start school on the 30th. 9th-15th looks pretty grindy for my as that will be over 1k games/week. I'd say this is a pretty decent grind and going to be mentally hard for me to handle at times. I really wish I had more than half of the days to play this month. Regardless, this heavy work load should give me an above 10k month after playing, coaching, and staking. I'll be updating after every session so I can hold myself accountable, sort of like I did for a little while last month.

I finally got my new bank accounts set up this week and set myself a budget for the upcoming school year. I have a ridic amount of frivolous spending i'm trying to decrease as I've been easily going over 2-3 times my month to month living expenses. I'm tracking all of this using Mint.com, which also has an app for the iphone. It's easily one of the best financial tools available so you guys should check it out for sure. I'm also in the process to get all my staking info onto spreadsheets. It's quite ridiculous that I haven't done this already because I really don't know how much I make except for that it's been well over sufficient

I go some new furniture for my apartment this weekend and it actually felt a little awkward doing so. I've been using the bed from home since I was a kid as well as my dresser etc. I guess just the action of my purchasing some of my own legit furniture solidifies adulthood/independence in a way. It'l certainly be a nice change from my room right now though. My bed frame is somewhat falling apart and my nightstand is a mini-fridge that I don't even use. Buying some furniture in town was way cheaper than the items I have seen online thus far. My overall deck-out-the-apartment budget was 5k, intending to spend 1k on a bed and dining table. Both of those items cost around 500 a piece. I'll probably be buying everything I need first and picking out my desk last. If anything I need to go all out on a desk since that's where I spend the majority of my time.

I hadn't really watched a movie by myself in 5 months or so I guess. A week or two ago the electricity in my apartment went out at 2am, right before I was going to fire up a session. My phone quickly died after but I was lucky enough to have my laptop charged. I bought Good Will Hunting a few months ago because I had remembered what a beautiful movie about life it had been. I finally got to rip the wrapper off the case and watch and am way glad I did. Watching It was without doubt plus ev because it really just motivated me to work harder and keep on going. I should definitely take more time to watch movies like this and Pursuit of Happiness. If you haven't seen Good Will Hunting, please do yourself a favor and go buy it.

Sums it up for what's on my mind right now. I like having a clear list of what needs to be done going into the month rather than jotting down some goals. Good luck in August and see you at the tables.

-Reasons

Single table nit fest

2010-07-28T05:14:00.003-05:00

So going a long with my tentative plan for Supernova Elite in 2012, I really need to learn the 9 mans.

228 $2 $15 11% $416 -- 9 mans so far

I'm going to play 1000 16/9s which should give me a mediocre sample space to judge my play. A long with my personal studying, I've spoken with glitlr and we're going to do some hand history trading since he has an interest in the 18 mans. Given my lack of experience at the 9 mans, i'll be pretty happy if I can sustain a 8% roi right now. I know a lot of the grinders have that but I think I can achieve a lot more. If spacegravy can get a 5% at the 60s, I should be able to get a 10% at the 16s imo. Regardless, I'll probably end up running slightly over ev my first 1k games or so because the regs won't know who I am a large percent of the time...which would give me some much needed fold equity.

Things are looking good for my Supernova chase. I have 55k vpp atm and might actually push for by the end of the month. I'm going to shoot for 20k vpp in August which will put me at 80k going into the school year. If it gets down to it, i'll just need to get 5k/month and sacrifice $350 to yomo for the prop bet if things get busy. I have 120k fpps right now which i'll def be looking forward to using come years end. I'm guessing i'll have ~3k in fpps by then, maybe more.

-Reasons

Change

2010-07-27T06:20:00.002-05:00

Changing my game up a lot right now and it feels reaaaally good. For one thing, I dropped down to 18 tables instead of 22 and I feel my ability and level of focus have gone way up. I'm not going to openly mention the changes I've been making, and I'm not even sure if they are things that I was doing before and moved away from...or visa versa. Today was the first day I actively implemented them, and the session just seemed to flow a lot better.

151 $2 $16 11% $343

Sigh, it's like 6:30am in the morning right now and there are no regs on. I really want to switch my sched up for the time being and have me playing my at my peak mental focus right now. I registered than unregistered...can't really decide if to play or not. I'll actually probably cut down on the volume for the rest of the month though. I'm pretty pleased that I easily got in platinum with only playing half the month, and no weekends at that. A lot of sorting out needs to be done concerning my students, apartment, situation, and school stuff. I'll maybe be only playing 75 games a day and devoting the rest of my time to that, and maybe make some time for friends.

Me and my buddy yomo20 have an accountability propbet for the rest of the year. I gave him 3-1 regarding getting platinum every month with a $100 bet. I'm at 54k vpp for the year, so that should be keep to keep me on track with things. Mixing the higher buy ins, that will be around 1k games at most during the school year. I've had some uneasy thoughts about how my scheduling will be with the semester starting up, working on a senior recital, girlfriend, keeping up with coaching, and playing, but I think that volume is pretty do able. I have two guys lined up that i'm supposed to be studying 9 mans with as well, def looking forward to that.

Haven't made any solid decisions on furniture yet, though I think I set my budget at 5k ish. Found a lot more stuff online and am going home on Thursday to look at some stuff with my sister. I'll be taking care of my deposit tomorrow as well so everything is pretty much locked in 100%.

I guess that's what's up as of late. Been mostly hangin with my girlfriend on the weekend and trying to get some cards in during the week. Both is going very well at the moment, just need to squeeze some violin in real soon. Few more hours up and it'l be 24 of them awake. Needless to say, brains about to shut down. Thanks for reading,

-Reasons

Daylight

2010-07-20T06:04:00.006-05:00

Feels good to finally have a decent day. I was close to stopping about 100 games into the day because I was getting super frustrated and wanted to go running. I loaded a session and did pretty well in it, loaded another to grind with my friend/student and help him reach his volume goal this month. Ran pretty good in the 60s and finished with 150+ games and a ~1k day.

Everything is 100% good to go on my new apartment and I've been stoked about getting some new furniture. I probably need to set a budget because I'm getting slightly carried looking at stuff...

Not sure what the deal is the current place i'm staying at, but it's probably best that it gets fixed rather soon. Puddles are in the kitchen and my bathroom and we, plus the maintenance guy, have no idea where they are coming from. Doesn't really appear that it's coming from the pipes so maybe it's coming up from the floor? My roommate says it smells when you come into the house. I haven't really been in and out enough to notice the contrast. I'll probably be getting to some IRL stuff tomorrow so I guess i'll find out.

-Benjamin

Get to it

2010-07-19T02:10:00.003-05:00

Just got in again from Jessica's this weekend and am pretty tired. 95% sure I'm getting my own place and am going to talk to the apartment people tomorrow to get a lock on it. Should know for sure what's going on around then. It'l be quite a bit of set up/work but very nice at the same time. I'll have to get a new desk, table, couch, and some other random stuff which I am very much looking forward to.

Things I need to do this week....

Run 4/7 days

Run 3 consecutive miles at some point

Get car checked out/oil changed etc

Sign up for classes

Violin lesson

500 sngs

3 videos

Continue eating healthy.

Fun little thing that you can get an app for you iphone. Me and Jessica used this twice this weekend and ended up eating at a Vietnamese restaurant as well as a Columbian one. Pretty interesting food at the latter and will have pics posted if they ever decide to load up to facebook

http://www.urbanspoon.com/spin-widget

I was able to play the drums this weekend before heading off to Houston. I got a call thursday evening from my friend asking me if I could play the drums for the orchestra camp concert that was going on at the school this weekend. This was the camp that originally exposed me to SFA and I haven't played drums in a while. So yeah, despite the fact that I hadn't woken up at anything close to 8am in a long time, I thought why not. I ended up playing Pirates of the Caribbean, Wipe out, Thriller, and Batman. It was by no means hard, just made me wish that musicians got payed more in general. I know at the end of the day it isn't about money, not for me anyway. But the contrast is just to insanely huge to music 100% after I graduate. That would mean me like, using my degree or something. No one does that these days...

Congrats to one my students Mattgeer who took 5th in the 30k Grtd on stars for 2.2k. He's been working like crazy at his game and it's nice to see it pay off. Also congrats to Jcar who took down the 5^3 for 6k.

If you haven't seen "Yes Man", do it.

-Reasons

English Breakfast and Pokerstars

2010-07-14T10:56:00.007-05:00

150 games [x]

grocery shopping [x]

run 1.5 miles [x]

Make a grinderschool video [x]

I'm doing a pretty decent job of getting up and starting my playing before noon. I have this nice iron cast tea pot where I just brew some different herbal teas and park it at my desk. Makes me run better at the tables for sure...

Had a decent day yesterday. Loaded up to the 60s my last sesh and got HU in two of them finally put my month back in the normal. I need to start looking at some different options to make playing easier though. Putting in this much volume has really been causing my right wrist/arm even mid way through the day. I've increased the sensitivity on my mouse a bit and am trying to get used to that. I'll def be picking up a wrist saver type thing that I can rest my wrist on that will hopefully easy the ache. I've always disliked the the option of using a x-box controller to play, but if that is the only way I can play 40 tables w easy, I might just have to.

So yesterday my friend showed me this new app for the iphone and it is absolutely amazing. What it does is takes the sounds and motion around you, then laces it with the music you are listening to. I really shouldn't try describing it, just watch the video.

While on the subject, I almost forget every time how positive and motivated exercising and eating healthy makes me feel. I've ran every day this week and eaten nothing but healthy foods. No chips, no cheese, or soda. I've written this before, but I guess the more times I write it = more times i'll see when glancing back at my posts every once in a while.

-Ben

Goals for the day-

100 sngs

run 1 mile

5 hh reviews

1 hour of coaching

hang out with friends

Goal Update

2010-07-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

Do a grinderschool vid [ ]

1 hour of coaching [x]

5 hh reviews [x]

100 games [x]

grocery shopping [ ]

clean my apartment [x]

Run 1 mile [x]

Not bad considering I played 150 games instead of 100. I was just running so insane bad that I'd my nature to grind more when that happens. I'll probably try and put in 150 games today and get the other stuff done as well, probably tack some coaching on. I had 67 pm's on parttimepoker when I looked today. I had been procrastinating because I knew they were just coming and coming. Def glad to have taken care of it though. 100% sure I won't be taking any summer classes so i'll be able to dedicate my focus to getting poker related work done before school starts.

Goals for today.

150 games

grocery shopping

run 1.5 miles

Make a grinderschool video

-Reasons

Cuz paper don't stack itself

2010-07-12T12:16:00.002-05:00

I have a ton of stuff to do/want to get done. Right now i'm 90% sure i'll be getting my own place before the start of next semester. I was sort of holding off of mentioning this because I wanted to talk to my roommate and his gf first before posting. Would be pretty lame of me for them to see it on here first. Anyways, if I have to end up moving, that'll take quite a bit of time. Regardless, i'm still going to try and get a ton of work done because there is plenty that I need catching up on. I might keep this as a daily log for a while so it helps me stay accountable.

Goals for today.

Do a grinderschool vid

1 hour of coaching

5 hh reviews

100 games

grocery shopping

clean my apartment

Run 1 mile

Almost

2010-07-08T17:41:00.002-05:00

So I'm scrapping this whole summer school for now. I called one of my friends that was supposed to take music history with me and she said the class wasn't going to go through due to the lack of sign ups. Fine by me. I could try to be productive (academic wise) and sign up for a different class, but I think i'll just focus on poker. Seeing how I hardly played between school and girlfriend before school ended, I don't think it'l be that much of an exception when this next semester starts. If I don't graduate in two more semesters,(I likely will anyway), I don't really care since I plan on staying living in the same spot for a while post graduation. No rush, I like it that way. Plus, sngs won't be as juicy later down the road as well, get them while they're good imo.

My tentative plan is to put in 10 hour days. 150 games a day, two hours of coaching, and 2 more hours split between working out and practicing my violin. I know that isn't going to be a set routine every day, but at the end of the week breakdown it should read something similar. I just looked and school doesn't start until August 30th for me. I'd really like to get some decent volume in before school starts. 4k games between july 13th and Aug 30th sounds somewhat doable and a reasonable goal for myself.

I'm ready to back on the regular grind of poker, music, and exercise. Being in Vegas didn't degen me out like the Bahama's did and I couldn't be more thankful. I have quite a few financial things I need to get organized as well. I'll be setting up a few bank accounts so that I don't really have to worry about the flow of my money at all. I'm going to start withdrawing on a reg basis, instead of sporadically, and have sched deposits to this n' that. High interest online savings accounts are way better than brick and mortar because it takes less people and space to run.

Jus felt like getting a ramble out. Going to hang out with friends now, girlfriends' this weekend, back to Nac on Monday. Holler,

-Reasons

Closing out

2010-07-04T06:38:00.005-05:00

“If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.”

-John Maxwell

One of the first times that I am writing a post and I don't even feel the urge to that much. I just know that if I pass up giving an update while I'm still in Vegas, I'd regret it. I really couldn't think of a title for this post because I've had so many mixed feelings about the trip. My initial goal was to make a lot of money, obviously. I got really discouraged after running disgustingly bad at the live sngs, even though they were really soft. There are a total of about 3 hands of me getting it in as a 75% favorite that would put me up at least 15k. I started running a little better at them toward the end of my stay and I also took second in a $16 mtt online for 4k

My roommate, Paul, came in 18th as you can see on the screenshot. We were on the same table a few times but never really got into any spots with eachother so I was glad to avoid that. I ran and played well for the most part, really only making one noticeable mistake when reviewing the hand history. It's pretty comic that I got super motivated to play online while out in Vegas, but I am way thankful for it.

I'm really interested to see how my mental state will be when I get back. I remember feeling completely degenned out more than I ever had when I got back from the Bahama's earlier this year. I was apathetic about everything. I'd say everything that happened in Vegas was 10x the Bahama's in every aspect. I start summer class about one week after I get back in Texas. I was thinking about my short term goals for the duration on the summer concerning my daily routine and it's a pretty tall order. 150 sngs a day, 1 hour of working out, 1 hour of practicing, and 2 hours of coaching, five days out of the week. Probably not the smartest thing to plan 10 hours days for myself but whatever, i'll work something out.

I'm more than ready to be home now. People have asked me if I would like to live out here, but I honestly would never do such a thing. So much around here is geared toward money and selfishness, all one big hustle. Most relationships around here, whatever the type, really only seem to develop at a shallow level. I miss my family, friends, and girlfriend an absurd amount. I've talked about how it's sort of hard to relate to everyone around me since our financial situations are really different. To be honest, I really miss all of my friends that actually can't do something because it cost $30. Everything around here is anything but normal.

I'm driving back tomorrow after a 4th of July party tonight. One of the guys that we've hung out with knows Nelly personally and plays at the same home game with him back in St. Louis. He's performing at some club tonight and we might get the hookup to go see him. Would without a doubt be a ballin way to end the trip. I'll be trying as hard as I can to make the ~20ish hour drive in one straight shot. Being home with the family and catching up from the 6-8th, Jessica's from the 9-12th, then lol summer school that I haven't signed up for.

This is really about 10% of what is really going on in my head right now. I'd say more than half of what I want to write about can't be published on this blog for many reasons. I will try and post a little more details about various parts of the trip when I get back to my apartment though.

Thank you all for reading and continuous support.

-Benjamin

Mid Vegas Ramble

2010-06-15T00:59:00.003-05:00

Driving through the desert wasn't as brutal as one might imagine, but I wouldn't call it fun. If I had planned it out better, I would have installed a new stereo in my car in which I can actually hook my iphone up to. I had a radio transmitter thing for a while, but the sound quality tilted me too much. I downloaded a bunch of two jacks in the hole episodes which kept me occupied the majority of the time.

Halfway through the trip and I must say it has some growing pains I guess. Love being out here though. A year ago exactly I was trying to convince myself to play the 16s on a reg basis. Earlier this year I was having people back me for the 1k in the Bahama's. Now, i'm own diming the live 1500s and gradually trying to cut out 16s from my online regimen. It has been by highest average buy in month by far. Don't want to complain much, but I have ran horrible and that has given be an insane amount of motivation to play. I have played online 11 days in a row, something I hardly ever do.

I have tentative plans to shoot for super nova elite on 2012. This gives me time enough to start working on my 9 man game, 6m cash game, and probably one more thing i decide to through in the mix so that I won't burn out. Super nova elite is calculated at $125,000 in worth. I figure i can get the 125k+50k from playing + 50k more from coaching and staking. Making 225k a year after school would be super nice...considering that my degree might make me 40k when I graduate. I guess if I run bad i'll be making 100k, I just don't see that happening. What I have calculated so far is that I'll need to play 189 sngs a day for 4 days a week to achieve this. Thats about 30 hours of playing, leaving me the other 10 hours to coach. Seems like a pretty good mix to me. I also factored in the 4 days a week thing because I realize there are some weeks where i'll be playing 7 days/week and others where i'll just be taking time off.

I've tweaked my game a bit, i'm pretty sure I did at least. Having multiple sng players at the house has been pretty cool. We are constantly sweating eachother and commenting on spots. I'm not sure if i sort of got lazy or the mistake has been present in my game through all 20k 18 man sngs I might have played. Regardless, it feels pretty awesome to correct something after so long. I have been having a horrible run as of late, but have been running a bit better since my "leak" has been plugged. I'll probably be taking out the 16/18s and adding the 27 45s when I can. It really seems that the shark to fish ratio in the 16s is weighted toward the sharks and it's getting super annoying.

Alrighty well just got a desk to go bowling. $1 dollar games and $1 dollar drink at the Orleans after midnight. I'll try and provide more trip update rather than poker ramble in my next post. Should be soon.

-Ben

Anticipation, Outliers, 10k,

2010-05-24T01:51:00.002-05:00

out·li·er, noun

1. Something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body
2. A statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of that sample.

Around this time last year I was really starting to break out as an individual. I was getting in shape, becoming my own player, and figuring things out. That thought sort of reoccurred today as I finished running in the ridiculous Texas heat. All the humidity makes 95 degrees here seem waaay more brutal than 95 degrees on the west coast. Moisture in the air doesn't allow you to breath as well, which causes cramps and light headed-ness. I'm not going to make a habit of running during the day, but treated that as my initiation to get back on it.

I've been meaning a post for a long time now. Things start compiling and I have no idea where to start.

SCOOP was awesome. Not only did I have that nice staking score, but it seems my friends were cleaning up really nice. Lindsey binked 26k, Dustin something around ~15k, Beejall and Piratos has some nice/close runs as well. I really need to start playing more at one point. I only played the main even busted our fairly quickly. Grats to my friends though.

Never really got around to playing the amount I wanted to this much, and don't really mind. My desktop finally got fixed and I was able to put in a sesh. I found some guy off of partimepoker that does remote support via teamviewer for 25/hour. He did a bunch of stuff in which I had no idea but managed to fix everything and make it 10x faster.

A day or two before that, I binked a nice 1st place in a $109 turbo that I late regged 45 min for. I run good in late regging mtts for some reason. The last time I got a 2k score in a $109 was late regging as well. Guess I'll be trying that on more of a reg basis. After 2 years of having my desktop and who knows how many of working with a computer, I finally learned how to take screen shots. Not sure how or why I didn't know for so long but it never worked lol. Unfortunately I left the pic on my desktop back at my apartment. I can upload it later I guess.

I've been still keeping up with my coaching even though the desktop had been out of commission. I have been having a few revelations about coaching and other concepts to implement to my students. My cash game coach recommended a book to me earlier this year and I finally got around to picking it up. The best way to describe is it encapsulates the logic and reason as to why some people are successful through various examples. Some people are shown the door of success and have to walk through it, other people are never even shown the door. I think poker has a matrix like application to this as I believe anyone has the ability to master it providing hard work and dedication. Hour and hours of hard work are required. Even though I don't play everyday like some guys do, I work and talk with students constantly which has easily improved my game as much as it has theirs.

Can't stop addicted to the shin dig
Cop top he says I'm gonna win big
Choose not a life of imitation
Distant cousin to the reservation

-Red Hot Chili Peppers

There is something awesome about the number 10,000. Running a 10k is my current goal after vegas, Tournie players always look to that first 5 figure score, and 10k is the number in which someone has to work hard to achieve mastery. Running the 10k is actually going to be a bit of a challenge because that means I have to stay in shape while in Vegas. While I'd like everything to be 100% fun and games, I'm going to try hard to stay on a consistent workout/eating schedule. Doing this was the key to my success last year online and i'm hoping to have a repeat performance this year. The 10 hours of practice/work might be a little unfamiliar to you all, but I have heard it thrown around me since I play the violin. I even heard the dean of music talk about it last year in convocation. Confirmation is always nice. There are many examples in outliers, one which includes Bill Gates, that show how 10k hours is needed to master something. This is really why I think it's so important to study, play, and study more as one develops his or her game. Because I have only been playing a few years, I doubt I have got 10k hours in. It's a lot of time that is going to take massive amounts of work.

I was reminded why I play this poker this weekend, two days in a row. After my score in that $109, I told my Mom to give one of my teachers/friends that works at my highschool $500. His new born daughter is having massive amounts of heart problems and the doctors had to perform surgery on her as soon as she was born. Even before she was born, they knew they were in 6 figure debt. This guy only teaches at a highschool. There have been extremely sad occurrences where the baby has been still born and the parents still have to pay everything off. Fortunately, this wasn't the case and the baby is alive, still having complications though. I'm probably going to run a pokergivesback thing for it, but haven't set it up because I wanted to wrap things up with Sara. Anyways, I helped my Mom with the music at the school the both teach at and ran into him. He was emotional and had to keep a tear from coming. Something about seeing a grown man cry for any reason is pretty moving. I am now realizing that I didn't even check my bankroll before/after that $4500 score. I have trained myself not to let pluses or minuses affect me that much. Seeing him so grateful for such a small % of what he owes was somewhat of a euphoric feeling. I'll be setting up something for him and his family in the near future. It's pretty sad that I get the opportunity to experience it first hand though. It was a pretty amazing feeling.

I gave the check to Sara for $1600, thank you all so much for helping out. Again, she was pretty much speechless and didn't know how to express thanks(I got some awesome cookies out of the deal though). We went to a coffee shop and did a little catching up. It's easily been over a year since we had seen each other. We weren't super good friends or anything, but hung out with the some crowd at times. Not only is poker improving peoples lives, but it's so good for the general perception of poker. Both recent instances I was able to explain how it all works and not be confronted with a hesitant ear. People are open to what I (and you all) are doing, and it's just so amazing for the world and poker.

Some of my recent motivation has stemmed from a book I just read called "I Will Teach You How To Be Rich". I normally don't go for books like this, but it's actually a book on personal finance geared toward the 20-30 year old. I have been pretty awful at managing it all lately. I even had an overdraft fee on my bank account because hadn't been keeping up with what was in there. The author gives a 6 week to do list that gets you on course and makes it to where you only have to pay attention to your finances 1-4 hours a month. It has everything to do with, getting credit cards going, avoiding fee's, opening a Roth IRA, high interest online banks, and a lot of other stuff. I highly recommend that you all check it out.

New goal as of right now, down payment on a house the year I graduate. I'll have more than enough to do so by then and i'll use it to start renting out or just sell it when i'm done. Even though Vegas is going to be an amazing time, I'm already looking forward to the after. Seeing my girlfriend, 2 more semesters until i'm done with school, and just progressing in life is going to be amazing.

Speaking of, about 1 more week until i'm in Vegas. I'd like to get my checked out as it's been making some weird noises and doing a bit of overheating. It's actually pretty nice, I just need to take care of it a little better. I'll be home for a few just another day then will be driving back on Tuesday night to have a few super productive days. Headed up to see the GF Friday-Sunday. When I leave, I guess i'll stop by my apartment then home to get some things, then i'll just drive as far as I can take it.

Thanks for reading,

-Benjamin

Free Rollin

2010-05-09T13:16:00.003-05:00

Friday afternoon/early evening, I get back to my apartment after practicing orchestra music with Jessica. We have a concert, playing Haydn's "Creation", that starts in a few hours. After I close my car door, some guy at he pool asks me if I had a tough day at work and I don't really get why. I tell this to my roommate and he says something of the sort that he was needling me because I wasn't at the pool at 5pm like he was, and was likely to be working. Ah ok so he was rubbing it in my face maybe...

Fact of the matter is I won 24k that morning, played a phenomenal concert with classmates, went to dinner with my parents, and went to a party with my amazing girlfriend afterward. How did everything get this perfect?

I just said "umm, no?" and walked away.

I really feel truly blessed and that everything is clicking so well at the moment. Playing/coaching/staking in poker and funding people to do acts of kindness around the world just feels like it's my thing. It all just clicks I guess.

Props to my boy eljay42 for making it deep. Almost took the whole thing down

One more week until

Two Weeks Notice

2010-05-01T17:13:00.005-05:00

Everything just crept up on me last month and I didn't get a whole lot of playing done. Sort of the problem is my volume always drops when I run well and I play like crazy when running bad. Having lots of coaching, girlfriend, and school winding down, i'm going to try and put myself on more of a scheduled pace to get everything done. School ends in two weeks...then two more weeks to Vegas. In between now and then I have finals, juries, and a concert to focus on (school wise that is). Extra curricular seems more of my main focus so it's all just culminating to a looot of stuff. Goals for this month are...

Run 3x a week

Get to 50 push-ups in a row.

Practice minimum of 1 hour a day 5 days a week

1k sngs

7-10 hours of coaching a week

Keep better track of my financial stuff.

Keep apartment clean (without getting a maid like last month)

Eat healthier and drink more water.

I didn't set much goals last month I don't think. I was in the middle of downswing and I was just focused on coming out of it. April graph btw...

258 $8 $20 27% $2,028

Like I said the volume is laughable but whatever. Coaching/staking went great this month and probably tacked on at least another 4k. All in all I have no idea because I keep awful track of that (as of last month). But yeah, i'm pleased with how things are going. I really need this to be a big month going into Vegas. Confidence is going to be a key factor in me doing well imo. I was listening to Deuce Plays not to long ago and they had a podcast with Bones on it. They were discussing on how some sng grinders that played the 300s and the 500s netted about 20k prof for the during they were in vegas. I certainly have the roll for it...it's just going to be a psychological bridge to cross.

I'll be loading just about all the 18s this month up to the 114s at times. I feel i'm not psychologically comfortable playing up to the 38s but still feel some uneasiness at times in certain 60s and 114s. It's really been mood dependent. My higher buy in sample is way legit though and it would be retarded of my not to be loading high. Just a little growing pains I guess. Growing pains that will make me more in the future obviously.

So after our concert a little over a week ago, I get my girlfriends parents. Family is more like it actually. They all came down for our orchestra concert so meeting them sort of worked itself in there. Everything seems to be pretty good cept for a minor detail I guess. Night after the concert, we are all meeting/greeting in the hotel lobby and it goes great. Long story short, her parents invite me to lunch the next day with them so we can talk a bit more I guess. I haven't really mentioned anything poker at this point but I felt it's better to get it out of the way so it doesn't seem like i'm hiding anything later on. Her dad asks me in passing as we are winding down lunch on what I'm doing for the summer. So I go "well I stake/coach/play poker for my job right now so i'll be in Vegas for 5 weeks. Ship the blank stares. I guess that was a lot better than extreme negativity toward it. Jessica (my gf) says it just caught them off guard a little but it'l be ok. Flipside of things, my parents came down for my studio recital on Thursday and met Jessica. We had dinner afterward and they pretty much loved her. Not much of a story there, but i'm pretty stoked about that.

I did get the month off to a good start today. I've already ran two miles, played 80 ish sngs (up 500) an am about to go practice for a while. I don't have any immediate plans so I might just be anti social the whole night and get a lot of work done. Games are pretty soft today and getting a nice volume head start on the month would be fantastic.

Regarding all of you that helped out with my friend Sara, I really appreciate it. I haven't spoken to her since I posted that blog so it's going to be a 100% surprise to her. She'll no doubt be blown away. I haven't really tallied up everything yet, but if it's a few $ short it'l be easy to cover. I'll be trying to set up something soon this next month and run it for a few after actually. Of of my highschool teachers and his wife had a baby that is going to have heart surgery (if the baby survives) and they are ~100k in debt because all of the insane medical requirements for the whole situation. It's an absolutely disgusting life spot for them to be in. Being able to ship them a check for a grand at the end of each month would help them a tremendousness amount.

I may for may not have been overfeeding my hedgehog. I was a bad hedgehog parent for a few days and didn't even see the thing. Next thing I know, it's gained so much weight lol. I need to start taking her out of the cage a bit more before it get's obese.

So on that light note, i'm going to practice and play more today. Hope you all have a good start to May.

-Reasons

Thrill

2010-04-21T02:30:00.003-05:00

I got advised by my professor recently. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that i'll be graduated and done in just two semesters after this one. Lots of mixed emotions about 100% "real life" in a year I guess. I'm going to have to tack on Educational Psychology to the summer II lineup...again. Those online classes are ridiculous. It's pretty much impossible for me to get anything done when I have some much other things that need to be done on the computer. The crazy thing is that i'm going to have to start the class ~5 days after I get back from Vegas. I don't I ever felt more apathetic than when I returned from PCA...that was only for 1 week. Vegas will be for 5.

So it's been three years since I've been in a committed relationship. Thats changed as of a week ago. I never really felt like getting in a relationship early in my college years was correct for me. Not to say that it isn't for other people though. It's just where i'm at as a person I guess. We (Jessica and I) see eye to eye on pretty much everything and share a lot of the same interests. I'm really just stoked about the whole situation in general. She knows next to nothing about poker though, which is actually kind of fun. There is some campus freeroll event tomorrow so I was trying to give her a run down on how it all worked. I think we got hand rankings, what a flop was, and blinds down today lol.

I might have mentioned in a previous post that my friends got me a hedgehog. (Hedgehog and a gf in the same week is quite a commitment imo lol). But yeah, I picked her up this weekend and she's pretty ballin. Hedgehogs are nocturnal creatures by nature so that works out perfect. I named her "Robin", which is after my friend/roommates gf. The thought of both just crack me up so it seems fitting.

Poker this month has been beyond lackadaisical. I'm scared to look but I don't think I've played even 200 games. I really need to keep the pace for super nova up so i'm going to have to crank it pretty hard the last weekend of this month. I would this weekend but I have a concert. Last time I tried to mass volume it up I had a 2kish swing. I was running a bit bad, but I can assure you that I was playing far from perfect. It will be nice to get some solid playing hours in though. All I have been doing poker wise lately is non stop coaching.

Life seems so solid at the moment. New awesome girlfriend, Vegas in a month, school over in a year, hedgehogaments

Help Sara Spread The Love- Pokergivesback

2010-04-09T03:10:00.027-05:00

Edit- Private tournie information posted below.

Hey guys, to those of you reading and those who helped Amy out, I'm running something of the same sort as last time for my friend Sara. I have known her since highschool and can truly say she has a heart of gold. Sara is in the mission field and will be travelling to Quebec June 19-July 3 (while we are in Vegas). So yeah, while we are having the time of our lives, she'll be sacrificing her time and money for the betterment of others.

There are 12 students going to Quebec and we still need help raising money.
"Your investment in these college men and women is vital to the success of these endeavors. We want to be a blessing to those we serve and to learn from the experiences provided through these trips. Ultimately, we want to declare the glory of God in all that we do"

Quebec has the highest rate of suicide in the Western World.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -Mahatma Gandhi

I'd say we all know people like that. People that weave a facade of goodness, but are just as self-serving as the rest of us. I can say with condifdence that Sara is the polar opposite. Throughout high school she regularly conveyed her love through random acts of kindness.

The total trip cost for Sara is $1600.

I'd love nothing more than to be able to send her on this trip at zero expense to her. I'll make it happen 100% and I would love for you to help.

A lot of you blog or talk about how poker is really unfulfilling (I agree) and want to do other things with it. She is doing work for the betterment of the world at her own cost.I can't really speak for you, but her sacrifice is certainly more then I have ever done for the world.

We raised $500 for Amy in a matter of hours last time. This really shouldn't be an issue at all.

Right now I'm pledging 10% of my sng action, 20% of my cash action for the rest of the month and 150$ to kick it off. I'll be doing some coaching in which those proceeds will toward Sara as well. I'd like to think that the above would take care of the cost alone but it won't.

If you would like to help out, ship to reasons14 on stars or FTP and make sure you let me know who you are. Email me or contact me at reasons14 on twoplustwo, flopturnriver, or parttimepoker. Even $5 means a lot. My aim is reason14 and skype is benjamin.reason. Feel free to contact me with any questions

Sara and I have been messaging back and forth for over a month now trying to get this all figured out. I'm stoked to finally get this off the ground.

Thanks for taking the time and consideration in making the world a better place through the game of poker, which we all love.

See you at the tables,

-Benjamin

Private tournie for Sara-

Tournie ID- 261309053

Password is yomoisfly

17:00 CT on Sunday, April 11th

50% of profits will go toward Sara Minimum. Good Luck!

Moss_master- $52

triptanes- $50 min or 10% of April sng action. Whatever is bigger.

yomo20- $96 and 5% of all action during April

GregDc- $200+10% April action

Eljay42- $400

push0rdie- $97

Mattgeer $50 +10% of April action

okse54- $54

Lynzeb- $50

voodduu- $50

Qeloton7- $34

Bigloser2448- $25

giRL90ihqdaa- $22.00

We're All Just Taller Children

2010-04-02T20:35:00.002-05:00

I get a nice long holiday from school this weekend so i'm home for a few days. It feels great. Just picked up a new batch of books at Barns and Nobles and headed over to some cafe I used to grind the $1 and 3$ sngs at. Not to mention I had to borrow my sisters laptop while doing this back then as well. I probably haven't been here in over a year it seems. I had a productive week and now I have some fun plans over the next few days. I'm going with my friends Lindsey and Katy to Dallas tomorrow to get some shopping done then hang out with some other people later on.

My cash game coaches recommended some books to me the last time we spoke but I couldn't remember what they were for the life of me. I did however walk out of the store with The Alchemist, Execution, and The Practicing Mind. I'm stoked about Execution at the moment. I have been approaching all of this staking/coaching like a business and that is precisely what this book is concerning.

"Developing the discipline of execution isn't made out to be simple, nor is this book a quick, easy read. Bossidy and Charan do, however, offer good advice on a neglected topic, making Execution a smart business leader's guide to enacting success rather than permitting demise." -Amazon Review

I really feel this is what I need in my life right now. Motivation has been a problem, poker and music wise, but it seems to be gradually getting better in 2 steps forward one step back sort of way. My cash game coach really put it to my last weekend on how I need to work harder if I actually want to get good at it. It's common sense type stuff but sometimes you jut need to hear it from someone else. My tentative plan is still to be at nl400 by the end of the year. I think if I have a clear set of goals for the long term future that would help as well. Thinking of it for a second, I want to have wife/kids by the time I am 31. 10 years really isn't that long of a time.

Overall, I really wish for something to just snap in me at some point and make me want to finish my degree. I keep having thoughts of taking a semester off but that would almost inevitably lead to my not finishing. Would that be such a bad thing though? Right now I am going to bank on cash games being a solution to my problem. My volume lacks in sngs right now because I don't always have time to load a clip up. With cash, I'll be able to pick and choose whenever I play with ease and not have to have blocks of 2-3 hours set aside for my sng sessions. The real reason why it has taken me so long to start putting in a lot of volume at cash is my insecurity. Sngs have been so consistent and cash is vastly more in depth. Over these past few months, I have really padded the life roll well. I'm hoping for that to allow some peace of mind while I probably take a drop in my hourly. Staking and coaching have been going great though. That is easily taking care of my immediate bills.

On the lighter side of everything, I found some people to clean my apartment for super cheap. I had paid one of my friends $50 to clean the place up but really would prefer my friends not to work for me in that manner. It was around Christmas time so i'm sure she needed the money. I was looking in Craig's List the other day for local maid services but couldn't mind anything around my area. I walk into Starbucks the next day and ship it. Found some lady that does cleans up houses for 10/hour. I had her come yesterday and she did a great job. Will definitely be using her again sometime.

My chest is still hurting from the Ski trip so I have been beyond lazy exercise wise post prop bets. I haven't done a thing. I guess i'll try taking a ton of ibuprofen like my dad recommended to see if that fixes things. I'd really like to come at these next few months swinging up until I go to Vegas.

I seem to be mostly rambling now. My laptop is dying and I'm going to go hang out with my sister in a bit. Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Always been one of the most motivating songs to me...

Laissez-Faire

2010-03-22T00:10:00.003-05:00

I have a game I guess, and it's pretty enjoyable.

Me and two friends went to a local bar type place when I got back from my snowboarding trip. Nothing special, just an establishment that serves burger type dishes and has pool tables in the back. Because people were still on spring break, the place wasn't crowded at all. Regardless, the place usually has good service. For some reason or another, our waitress sucked beyond all measure.

She was late getting my friends water/drinks off the bar and late getting food on two occasions. At some point, another waitress noticed we were waiting while the other one was sitting down and got our stuff for us. She apologized for the other person, but there isn't really much of an excuse imo. I had a small check of $25 and instead of paying with smaller change or a card, I thought a $100 would do fine. Crappy waitress looked pretty excited, like she was actually going to get a tip or something. All three of us collectively gave her a dollar. I went and gave the other waitress a $20 and thanked her for not sucking like the other girl did. We gave another waitress who got our dishes off the table $5. Maybe we'll get better service the next time we go back. That, or she'll just be a waitress in some no-name town the rest of her life. Either is fine with me.

Addicted to this group right now. I feel like I can relate with almost all of the lyrics she Writes.

Chains were kind of ridic to put on the car. It was snowing pretty bad the first day so you had to have chains, or you weren't allowed to go up. I think the store marked up the price a good bit, $120 for some chains seemed rather high but w/e. I had to pull over like three times because anytime I would get going over 20 mph, a THUD THUD THUD sound would start up on the back left tire which couldn't have been good. I think I found out what the problem is and fixed it with my sisters hair bands, but we could only go up to 30 before the sound kicked back up. We ended up making it up the mountain for a nice day of snowboarding. The chains started to sound way loose on the way down, so good timing. Have more vids and pics i'll try and put up later.

A nice drunkin yelling dynamic between me and my ex gf this weekend. We both agree it was quite embarrassing. It was mostly in front of friends that we know anyway so whatever. It's probably going to affect the amount of work I get done this week which really pisses me off as I just got back from spring break. I really should be practicing for my lesson this afternoon but decided to catch up on some writing instead... It would be best if that was the first and last of that type situation though. I haven't had to deal with any sort of drama in so long, it's super annoying.

A few pics from the house i'll be staying in vegas over the series. Got it booked for 5 weeks and am pretty stoked about it. As of right now it's Me, vers, whoopsy_dazy, one of his friends, and cardlo69. I think yomo20 is going to drop in for a week or two as well as some of my other friends. I'm actually getting pretty stoked about the whole series now. I'd really like to use that time to focus 100% on my poker stuff since i'll be away from school/classes.

I got found something for PokerGivesBack finally. One of my friends is going with a group to Canada later this summer to help people out. I sort of messaged her out of the blue because it felt right. I'm hoping to have some more concrete details up as around the beginning of April.

All I have time for now I guess. Thanks for reading,

-Reasons

Adult...or something like that

2010-02-27T18:06:00.004-06:00

Pretty insane that I am 21 one now. I think a day or two before my birthday I was having thoughts like a 39 year old does when he is about to go over the hill. It was all pretty illogical because it was just me thinking how I could be doing better at everything I do, how I need more motivation, and worrying-ish about my future. Aside from online friends, I think I am more successful than most other 21 year olds are. You think would that would provide me some comfort but for some reason it doesn't. It could possibly be that the degree in which I am getting, music education, teachers get ~30k/year which is just ridiculous. I have been doing a lot of research over investing these past few days. It is retarded to just have these liquid funds sitting around depreciating every day. I'm going to try and my best to sit back and be a good 21 year old though. It's weird how a number just makes you more aware of things.

Made some prop bets with my friend yomo20 that will hopefully get me into some good habits. For the next month, starting tomorrow we both have to...

Go to the gym 4x/week and run at least 1 mile. Every day missed is $100

Do 50 push-ups 4x/week. Every day missed is $50

Eat a serving of fruits and vegetables every day. Each day missed is $20

Doesn't appear to be that hard, but building good habits is pretty hard to do especially when playing poker and music all day long. I had a day last week where I played the violin for 6 hours and did poker related stuff for 5.

My birthday has been pretty killer. I say has been because I am about to finish up the tail end of it tonight. My friends took me out on thursday, had an awesome party at my apartment on friday, now I am back home about to have one with my family. I'll post some pics as soon as my friends uploaded them. I ordered my roommates girlfriend a pokerstars tanktop and it came in yesterday. I told her if she didn't wear it the entire evening, she wasn't allowed into the apartment. She gets stressed out just seeing me play, it's hilarious.

I guess I am pretty much done playing for February. I can't decide if I am content with my volume or not. Low volume while running decent has always been a leak of mine, but I have been practicing way more and hanging out more often. I think it's a pretty good balance but March might be a struggle with me being away for a week on spring break and all.

Haven't tallied everything up yet but I think I had close to 5k in staking and coaching making it ~10k month. Def helps make up for some of that breakeven stuff going on in January. I have one of my friends running a spreadsheet for me on all of my parttimepoker stuff and supposedly I am running at ~20% roi. Small sample space but it seems to be going well and should be fairly consistent.

Some pics from a recording session I did for a soundtrack earlier this month (may or may not have written about). I was up for over 24 hours at his point so I might look a little spaced out. Breath of fresh air to be able to do something musical though.

Dinner is about ready so that's about it. Home you all have a good start to March. Thanks for reading,

-Ben

On A Life High

2010-02-19T03:47:00.003-06:00

Every now and again you just have to stop and think what we are doing, what we are here for. How can I complain when I run like crap, go to school, have a car, a healthy life, and friends. I'm pretty sure that makes me one of the richest people in the world.

Whenever I have been running lately, I have been listening to the latest Tommy Angelo podcasts on Deuces Cracked. I think it was those podcasts 2 years ago that helped me get my game on track. A lot of what he talks about is recreating the same situation around us whenever we have our killer days. Did we eat, exercise, or do not poker activities that day? I need to log this down for keeps. I have been running close to every day, practicing my violin for 2 hours, killing poker, and loving life. I need to always try and recreate what is happening when things aren't looking up. I have picked up so much motivation since my last post to start doing better at everything. Having goals and actively making strides toward those goals each day makes so much sense.

I feel like something is going to hit me like a rock next week on what to do for pokergivesback. I have had quite a few more people ask me about it since bringing it up in my blog last post that I am getting more stoked about it.

Chair auditions are on Monday. Finding out today sort of made me mad because I was planning for Sunday to be a really big poker day. Practicing has paid off and I found that I already knew most of the cuts really well. I think either way it is a win win situation though. I bust early from the mill, practice and do well. Orrrr I just go deep and do pretty good anyway.

It's pretty sick how meeting and hanging out with new people can give you a sick drive to do everything better. Oh yeah, i'm 21 in like 6 days. How baller is that?

-Reasons

Less Stress

2010-02-16T17:09:00.004-06:00

So in relation to my last post, I have dropped my class after first period. I think having my first class on Monday start at 2pm is a fantastic choice. This will allow me to get in long Sunday sessions/sweats. I'm really apathetic about school right now and learning about rocks from two guys that hardly speak english is just a bit much for me right now. I am contemplating taking biology for summer II after I get back from Vegas, but I might just throw in on the extra semester i'll probably be taking. I am down to taking ten hours now, which is really lol. I can say though that it is one of the most relieving feelings not having to go to geology lab tonight for two hours. I'll be spending that extra time, reviewing hand histories, at the gym, and practicing my violin

Cash is going pretty good so far, I am epic failing with volume but I feel I am understanding it ok. I purchased 10 hours with marshall28 and have only used 2 of them so far. He is a pretty sick coach from what I can tell. I recorded a 20 minute vid that we watched during our sesh and spent two hours going over it. As soon as I get in about 1k more hands and watch the rest of his vids i'll get another session and move to nl100. I really need to stop being lazy at it. Running at 50/hour at a game I just started at is nice though. I have skyrocketed out of my sng swing so I should be focusing more at cash. I think that is really the only thing that was holding me back from playing so much.

If yall have any good ideas for the PokerGivesBack project I am trying to get going, let me know. I really appreciate the few people that have been constantly been asking me about it. Going to need a new name for it as well. Apparently pokergivesback.com is already taken so I can't use that.

7k+ month so far. I have been running on a regular basis and am practicing more. Everything still needs a huge improvement, but i'm heading in the right direction.

Watched a lot of Planet Earth and listened to Sigur Ros this weekend. This video seems to be appropriate. Gym, practice, the grind time. Hopefully be taking down this FTOPs $215 turbo then the Million on Sunday. Thanks for reading,

-Ben

Even It Out

2010-02-09T03:13:00.002-06:00

I decided to drop my first period class today. Drop probably isn't the right term as I never signed up for the class in the first place. All in all I might end up having to take another semester but I think it is for the best. Numerous thoughts were going through my head this morning about taking this entire semester off. I figured that if I were to have any chance in completing it without going completely insane is to just lighten my load a bit.

On a good note, I tried going to my violin lesson an hour early today. I used to that extra time for practice purposes and had a great lesson. I think I played the violin for a total of 5 hours today? Seems like a ridic amount when trying to figure the rest of my life out right now.

Congrats to Vers on his recent scores. 100k in the brawl and shipping a ticket to snowfest is pretty sick.

My 21st is in 16 days. Shiiiip it.

-Reasons

Full Stomach, Full Plate

2010-02-08T03:34:00.002-06:00

I need some motivation so bad right now, mostly for school. The first few weeks have been somewhat of a blur as I have skipped numerous classes and have been just chilling with friends. I have some much awesome stuff going on aside from classes I wish I could focus on. I realized something about myself over these past few days as well. It wasn't a coincidence I created that "Pokergivesback" blog a month ago. I grind better when I am doing it FOR something other then myself.

Last Thursday I was on the phone with one of my friends at around 3am. I just got done playing and I finally got a call. Me and her had been playing phone tag for a day or two and finally got to catch up. I had class at 10am the next day and when I glanced at the phone it was almost 6. Averaging only 4-5 hours of sleep the previous day, I knew that if I was to go to bed, I would not go to class. I said something about staying up and grinding and she quickly responds with a line something to do with me giving her 10% of what I make. For some reason, that gave me sick motivation to just crush my upcoming session. I only played an hour and made just a $100 but it felt nice. Nothing killer, but it gave me focus. I am finding something in this next week to start grinding for and we'll see how that goes.

-Ben

Languid Month, Kind Of....

2010-01-30T04:28:00.007-06:00

Glancing at my last post, seems that I left off before I went to the Bahama's. For those who have already seen the pictures, you can tell it was a pretty awesome trip.

It was pretty hectic starting out. My flight left at seven in the morning if I remember correctly, and departed from Dallas. I live ~1.5 hours away from Dallas and have this unreal ability to get lost wherever I go, even though it should not be all that complicated. After a minor tilt session accompanied with a few fist-to-steering-wheel frustration punches, I arrived at the airport. I guess you all would need to know that I lost my plane ticket back to the US from China to get a picture on how I run bad at travel-ish type things. A some waiting in line, realizing you needed to do something else, then getting getting back in that line (rinse and repeat), I was on my way to the Bahama's. Despite the fact that I was 24 hours without sleep when I got on the plane, it was an eye opening trip. I brought a long a book that a friend recommended to be called "The Brain That Changes Itself", which is essentially a book that talks about how our brain is plastic and we can do many things to change it. That small description doesn't give it justice really but I must say that it is a life changer. I have bought like 3 copies now and am just loaning them out to friends. I really feel so adamant about what is written in that book that I want everyone I love to read it. Maybe a better way to describe it is that it's sort of takes the concept of the power of positive thinking accept on crack. I already digress in writing about the trip so I'll most likely save my ramblings about neuroplasticity for another time.

I met up with my student/friend, Dustin (respek66), at the airport and we caught a cab to the resort. The city of Nassau was pretty depressing for the most part. It was all ghetto and you can tell that poverty was commonplace. The cab ride was 30 minutes to get there and I don't think we went on a highway once. It was a lot of small roads and such, which seemed ridiculous because of the distance we had to go.

Started Writing the above a few days ago and just don't seem in the mood to finish it right now. I have no idea why, but right now I find myself skipping my first period class again. SNG wise, January sucked and was my worst month in over a year. I was able to make a lot via staking and coaching but it still makes me feel sort of meh when things are break even. If my students weren't showing great results, I would have probably lost confidence in my game. I'm glad that isn't the case.

I degenned pretty hard at PCA (for my personal records at least), and actually feel i was a good thing. I made money at poker but lost a decent amount just doing stupid stuff like credit card roulette, shuffleboard on a poker table, foot races, and flipping. It was a blast. Having all that money come and go at a moments notice makes this month a whole lot easier on me. I didn't really tilt at all.

I'm in the middle of a 3 day fast right now. I have been eating really unhealthy and seem to be unfocused about a lot of things in life right now. I realized I have done this the past two years so I guess I am making it into a yearly thing. I don't feel that bad right now and it has been close to 40 hours without any food. Some people wear a rubber-band around their wrist to remember stuff, I guess this is my method. When I break the fast, it is going to be nothing but healthy food and lots of exercise. My eating habits at school are just absurd and I feel I shouldn't be doing that to my body.

Not only did I skip my class today, but I emailed my violin professor that I was not prepared at all and that we should just skip my lesson. She gives us one "grace" day so to speak, out of the semester in which we are allowed some slack. I hate using it so early in the semester, but I think it would just be wasting her time. I am going to be practicing at least 1 hour a day before I do any fitness or poker thing.

I turn 21 this month, hopefully things will look better then the last one. Some goals for this next month are...

2k sngs

10k hands of cash

6 hours of violin a week

Get back up to running 5 miles per workout

Eat healthy

7 hours of coaching a week

Go to all my classes

All I can think of right now. A pretty tall order to fill with school, we'll see.

-Ben

Coming up

2010-01-20T01:09:00.002-06:00

I have registered to play in the WBCOOP PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! You too can Play Poker Online at PokerStars.com and take part in the WBCOOP which is open to all Bloggers by registering on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 705379

Number Crunch

2009-12-30T05:15:00.006-06:00

I can't go to sleep at all right now and have been thinking about posting for the last few days. I guess now would be a good time to do so then...

I have been toying around with what my goals are for next year concerning everything, not just poker. Oh yeah real quick brag, I passed all my classes. Anyways, as far as $ number goes, I have been toying with everything from 60-100k for total profit. I think anything below that I would be disappointed in myself. Right now 70k is looking to be the most reasonable but I might as well aim high. I haven't had anything below a 6k month in a while so that would = to 72k if I hit that every month.

Best route for me to accomplish this and balance everything out will be-

4k/month from playing

2k/month from coaching, staking and rakeback.

Not that i'll be the richest poker player or anything, but putting this all down on print is pretty weird to think about. After my first three months of poker this year, I was only up 2k. Now I am at the point where I can make 10k/month if I wanted to? As far as I was concerned, I was on track to becoming a music teacher to hopefully eek out 30k/year. It's so different because I am still around that same group of people every single day at school I really don't know how to handle it all sometimes.

Even though poker has been so consistent i'm still nervous/on edge about it all. It is just the nature of the game for me to break even for a few months next year, simply because I am writing all of this and making it tangible. I guess that is what makes poker fun though, huh? I can't begin to express how thankful I am for such a strong group of friends, coaches, and students, to fall back on when needed. Having a solid basis of encouragement and motivation is so key in every aspect of life.

I finally decided on some watches, I ordered the first one the other day and will be getting the second one at some point next month.

I'm probably going to the Bahama's for the PCA and very much looking forward to it. Need to get my passport and tickets tomorrow to hopefully get it all cleared up. I am getting really freaking bad at micro managing everything now matter how on top of things I appear to be. Paying my friends to clean my apartment the other day was pretty nice and I have been tinkering around with the idea of a personal assistant/maid for a certain amount of time per week.

Whatever, I told a student I would coach in a few hours and I need some sleep. Thanks to all of yall who have expressed kind words about the blog lately. It means a lot and keeps my motivated. Best wishes to having a good 2010.

-Reasons

Master of None

2009-12-23T03:08:00.005-06:00

Being home is so so sweet. I am temporarily no longer malnourished because I get to enjoy the sweet cooking of my mother. Been home two days and have had grilled catfish and prime rib. That certainly beats going to quizno's on a regular basis. Not having a meal plan in college is pretty lol for me because I just get so lazy about it.

Anyways, not really sure what has cause my elongated absence from posting but I finally have some time this evening. Sort of crazy that in my last post I said I was feeling so much direction because that about went out the window during finals week. Coming close to quitting school could be an understatement. One Wednesday morning I get up to go to class and my car is doing that odd thing again where it doesn't start. I shrug it off and go play some sngs because I wasn't too concerned about first period anyhow. Besides, the car usually starts after about 5 minutes. 10 minutes before my conducting class I decide to ship it on to school and come to find that my car is still not turning over. The whole situation is really sort of annoying but I record it on my phone to show to my professor to see if I can get it excused.

Minus all the monotonous details, it really all comes down to he says that this absence is unexcused and I might not pass the class because of some numerous other absences. Most of the class periods that we have missed we have done absolutely nothing in. If it wasn't for all these missed periods, i'd now doubt at least have a strong B in the class. If I were to fail this class, that might set me back for a year. Set me back a year to get a degree in which i'll pretty much be making zero money at. This really got me to questioning a lot of things about why I am even in college at the moment.

The top top violin professors around my area charge 60/hour for lessons..just 60. I really wish that someday music wasn't so under appreciated in our society and was maybe considered a real job. The fact of the matter is that I have made more then my own mother this year, her being a teacher and me playing cards. I had to have a huge discussion with my conductor to keep my head on straight. My grades this semester are less then stellar I think and I know i'll be somewhat disappointed as well as my parents. They don' really know the stress I have been going through with school as of late though, or me thinking about stopping that is.

Poker has been going well this month. Though, as always, I never really get in the volume I set out to. Early December, I decided to stop going for Super Nova. Given all the situations going on around me, it just didn't seem like the best thing to do. I have a lot of students now, and it wouldn't seem fair to just reject them for the rest of the month and just play for myself. The next few days after school let out, I think I got about 4-5 hours of coaching in each day which really help me get some things going. I think taking some extra time with all my students is essentially the more +ev route because I stake quite a few of them. It's also a lot easier to coach then just sit and grind. I also feel like I am doing something useful and fulfilling which is nice as well.

After taking those few days after school to stay and play poker, break has been pretty chill. I have gotten to catch up with friends and family and get even more coaching done. It seems at the end of the night I have a long list of hand history reviews to do for my students. Nevermind though, I enjoy it and it keeps me sharp. I'm not really done with shopping yet because I like to procrastinate like mad on those things. I was already hating life to day when I was shopping with my sister because I can't stand idiots in the mall. I was fortunate enough not to see anyone and knew and be forced into some awkward cliche conversation.

So yeah, i'm busto though. After staying up an entire night, I decide to pull out a sesh running without 30 hours of sleep. To get through this, I ship it on over to starbucks to get a peppermint mocha. I get my credit card to pay for it as I normally do and it gets declined. I think the cashier felt bad for me because he probably just assumed I was some broke college students so I I was like "cool, thanks" and left. Just like I never look at my online roll, grades, and obv bank statement in real life, I forgot to withdraw money from stars and my account is in the negative lol. I have a healthy 5 fig roll online and I can't even afford to buy some coffee, whoops.

Oh yeah I never really posted a results graph of November. Some people have asked to see it so here it is.

Also, by the time new years comes around, reasons14 will have a new face on pokerstars. I think it is without a doubt going to send any and everyone into tilt mode that sees it. Here is a nice little glimpse of what you all will be dealing with :)

Well anyhow, some other stuff going on besides the norm is I am doing better about running more. No, I didn't bring my running shoes home because that would be a waste of time. But I seem to be getting in some jogs before I play more and more often and I think it is helping my overall mindset when I grind. As always, I recommend it to all. I also broke down the other day and just paid someone to clean my apartment. I figured since all of my friends are busto and I need more time to coach and play over break, i'll just ship them $50 to clean everything up. I admit, that is sort of ridiculous but w/e, it seems like a win/win situation to me.

Tomorrow is going to be more of the same and i'm looking forward to it. Shopping, poker, coaching, friends, and whatever. Hope break is going good for you all. Thanks for keeping up with me this year,

-Reasons

Sense of Direction

2009-11-28T02:44:00.003-06:00

For the first time in a while, I am feeling that my life is actually going in the right direction. Yeah, I love music with a passion, but I think i'll be doing poker after I graduate. I'm already making more then my mother does as a music teacher, two times more as a matter of fact. Money has something to do it, but not everything. Ever since I did that thing for my friend Amy, I have just been stoked about everything coming up (poker wise). You can call it a bit premature for me talking like this, but I have that sense of feeling that it's all going to work out.

I got a cup of coffee with my friend Kacy tonight and now i'm feeling great about life. Me and her had been really tight friends toward the latter half of highschool but haven't been in contact as much since we went out separate ways in college. She goes to OU now and I really don't think I have seen in her in about a year. As far as friends go that don't like to talk about or even have anything to do with poker, she was icing on the cake. I almost don't blame her though, I guess what she saw me doing 1-2 years ago was a straight waste of time. I really didn't have anything to show for my hard work but now that's different. We both updated each other on the year and our plans for the near future are. It was such a joyous feeling because we were both getting really excited for one another. I'm doing well in poker and she's going to France to continue her international studies. Having those friends that you haven't seen in a while but can talk to and it's like you didn't even miss a beat is awesome.

A bit early on in the month to start spitting out stats but it's big I guess. Something ~10k this month is being projected as soon as staking, rakeback, coaching, and playing is all said and done. I like all the other aspects besides the actual playing because if that's all I did, i'd be pretty depressed with it all and probably not do it. This is my first month to load higher games and to be realistic, even though I don't have a huge sample, I know I am a solid winner up to the 60s. I have such a clear head and thought process when I want that there is no doubt in my ability to crush long term. My study of the game has not really gone down a fraction which is why I think I continue to do well. I know and have witnessed a lot of sng players who think after mastering icm and what not, they can beat the games for however long they see fit. I am actively studying my own game and discussing with other players to make sure i'm always improving. In life, and especially poker, complacency with mediocrity is the best way to guarantee failure in the future. I'm really trying everything in my power to avoid that Not that being a failure has even crossed me mind, I really just keep my eye on success.

There were some rough patches mid month though. Grinding for supernova has been pretty tough so far, but I have enjoyed it, I didn't do that much last weekend except stay inside and grind. I got in about 600 games and slowly bled around ~1600 off. I told myself that was the last day of loading games $100+ for a while because I wanted to pad my roll (and my mindset) a bit more before going at it again. Monday, I loaded another $109 mtt turbo on a whim and ended up taking 3rd. I didn't get a hand for such a long time and got down to 1k at the bb=200 level then things started clicking. I was actually just excited to cash. Everything seemed to play itself at that point, people are just so bad late at night. My old coach and owner of sngmentors, Draqq, sweated me for the FT . He is pretty much a MTT baller so I was knew I was in good hands. I ran by my plays by him and he reassured me on everything I did. No tough spots or anything, just making sure. Needless to say, shipping 3rd for 2k+ was a nice score and confidence boost after having a nasty weekend.

I'm still sorting out ideas for project "GrindForAmy" so I can get it off the ground. After talking with Kacy tonight and mentioning it to a few poker players, I really think it's going to do well. Most charities have something it specifically benefits though and that is what I am still pondering. Currently, I have only specified that the money goes to "people that make the world a better place" where as things like Ante up for Africa, Invisible Children, and Faceless, all have clear goals and meanings. People are going to be less inclined to give if they aren't sure of the purpose so I really need to give some thought as to what it'l specifically go to. The idea that has been lingering in my head most as of late is that they money will go to individuals who are having a positive effect on the well being of people in third world countries. Since poker is essentially about money, it really only makes sense to me for the money to go to people that are not as well off as we are. It would be nothing short of phenomenal to have to have our money going toward people in all areas of the world. Like, maybe we can start off supporting a guy in Africa, then over in China, followed by South America. I can see potentially there being a different section of the website for a particular place in the world that we are benefiting. I'm just rambling off thoughts and ideas now so if you all have any, let me know and i'd be more then happy to entertain them. The blog should be soon though, so keep on the look out for that.

School has been so sick as of late, i'm getting more and more apathetic about it all because some of the classes I simply won't make use out of. I'm confident in the fact that I won't ever be teaching a room full of 6th grade band students so having to go to woodwinds at 8am in the morning is somewhat of a drag. Not to share to many bad beat stories but I had a music history test, clarinet test, french horn test, and had to play for studio all on the same day. Balancing practicing a few hours, playing poker, spending time with my students, and trying to manage a social life is getting a little tougher right now. I hope that it all chills out after this semester though. I won't have to grind close to what I am right now after December, but after experiencing this results it's going to be hard to stop.

That is really the nuts and bolts of what is happening right now. I could elongate this post a bit more but I don't thing people will read it all (if they do anyway lol). I am stoked about all of this coming up though, it can be quite overwhelming at times.

Seeing something like always reminds me why I love music so much. Me and my sister went to Dallas on Wednesday to get some shopping done and I heard this in Anthropology. I really dug it so I had the person working the desk look up who it was. I would post the actual version but seeing the creativity of this live performance is simply amazing.

Thanks for stopping by guys, hope November closes well for you all.

-Benjamin

Edit- made the blog after I wrote this, check it out... http://grindforamy.blogspot.com/

Filler

2009-11-17T11:25:00.003-06:00

I haven't done a real update in a long time. A lot of new stuff is happening with school and poker that is keeping me insane busy.

I have decided to go for super nova. For one to get this, they need to get 100k vpps in the one year period. I have 40k more. It might not be a huge amount for some people but that is going to be the hardest grind I have ever done for a a month. With that being said, there is no way I am going to grind 8k more 16/18s so I have moved up to donking at the 60s and even some 114s whenever they decide to fire and look soft enough. I am in for some nasty days of locking myself in room over break and getting 300-400 sngs out in a day.

School is pretty insane right now. I have a Music history test, clarinet test, and french horn test tomorrow. Not only that but I have to play in studio class which i'm simply not ready for. I think was supposed to sign up for classes yesterday but had so many other things to do I forgot, I hope I don't get stuck with another lame schedule. I changed my course plan a bit, i'll still be getting my degree but no teacher certification. It's really what I think is best for me as I have no desire to teach a classroom full of kids. I'll be much happier teaching privately, doing my own business, and playing poker.

Thank you guys again for helping my friend Amy out (read last post). It got such a great response I am going to be setting something like that up on a regular basis. It is going to be a group of poker players that pledge a % of monthly winnings that will go to people who make the world better. When they get back from doing whatever they do, trip report and pics will be provided. I'd like to expand more on my idea but I simply don't have the time right now. This whole idea will be really good for the image and the poker community in general, I can foresee it getting really big. I have a few guys that have agreed to help out, let me know if you are interested.

October stats ^

It was a pretty weird month, but finally came together at the end. Coaching and staking went well so I have nothing to complain about.

-Reasons

So if you want to do something fulfilling today...

2009-11-02T12:18:00.023-06:00

BINK- Didn't take more then 2 hours. I'll do a bigger write up later but thanks you so much. If anyone sends more i'll just take it out of the $200 that I initially pledged and give Amy the extra.

"Thank her for being a better person than me and doing some good in the world. Also ask her to pray for me to run good wednesday because I need to win this prop bet yo!"

-lol ratsauce89

"ill send 20 to you on stars, so long as I have some reassurance that she believes poker is a skill game"

-paradicecity

Screen names below are players from pokerstars.

Reasons14- $100

Draqq -$100

Brbbbq on ftp- $50

Prom Queens- $50

rat sauce 89- $41.71

Mattgeer (ftp)- $30

Hannah Zwieb (personal friend)- $30

Whoopsy_dazy - $30

Wbmustang- $30

bagonirix - $30

manhat10_ite - $30

Qeloton7- $30

Yodaddy379 -$30

giRL90ihqdaa - $22.22

paradicecity- $20

Gavin555- 20$

Peachesforme - $20

Jbrown8777 -$20

7curse- 17.77

CMSmith - $13.27

Binkdd- $10.18

"Hi Reasons,

I don't think we've ever formally chatted, but I recognize you from grinding the 18s and recently started chatting with one of your students (CastleBravo).

Anyways, I saw your post on your blog about your friend and it sounds like a great cause. I have a full-time job and have just recently started grinding sit n gos as a hobby to make some supplemental income. I had my best month ever and definitely have the roll to help your friend out. If you PM me how much she needs (you said in your blog around $300?), I can send it to you tonight (but may be late bc I'm on west coast time).

In the grand scheme of things, $300 is pretty easy for me to cover and I've ran like God in October anyways, so its probably right for me to donate some of it to a good cause.

Just let me know how much she needs and I will ship to you on PS tonight.

cheers,
Greg"

-Some guy willing to help and I don't even know him, just seen him at the tables.

Hey guys, I really need yalls help on this one so i'm just going to throw out a few ideas.

I have a good friend Amy who is going to El Salvador to do some missions work and she has had some trouble raising money. She is going there to effectively train other counselors and have a positive effect on the youth; the trip is ten days long. It is completely non profit for her and she is doing it out of the goodness of her heart. She is 500$ short for the whole trip and the deadline was pretty much yesterday thought they will make it work if she gets the money in by the next day or two.

So far I said I was going to give her $200 so now she just needs $300 more. It's really not that much in our eyes but its great amount for her. I would try and cover the rest already but rent is due and that would kill my checking account.

I mean if ten people were to just give $30 (pretty much like 1 buy in for you poker players) that would cover everything. She is literally one of the sweetest girls I know and I really want to help her out.

Obviously if I had planned this out ahead of time I would get a benefit tournie together that we can all play and give a % to her (kevstreet style etc) but am just out of time.

A lot of you blog or talk about how poker is really unfulfilling (I agree) and want to do other things with it. She is doing work for the betterment of the world at her own cost. I can't really speak for you all because I don't know everyone here but that is certainly more then I have ever done.

If you do just want to donate, ship to reasons14 on stars and message me on facebook with your real name and sn on stars so I know who you are and that she can message you (thank you letter etc). My name is Benjamin Reason on FB and you can search me using my email- [email]Reasons14@netscape.net[/email]. Profile pic you see is me in some car chunkin up deuces. If you would rather ship her your own check PM me for an address. The smoothest would just be via stars or ftp trans though.

Really the best thing that has come to my head is I can offer coaching for a higher price and donate that to her. My hourly for coaching has been 50-60$ and that usually includes an HH review. I'm sure I could provide some insight to your 18 man game if you wanted it. So yeah, i'll offer one hour of coaching with a seperate hh review as a follow up for 100$. You could even just get it for a friend maybe.

All of my long term students have crushed.... so obv you are getting good value

If you have any questions for her just ask in here and i'll relay them to her. My contact info if you need me is reasons14 on aim and benjamin.reason on skype.

Cliff notes: help my caring friend out and you'll prob run a bit better then if you shipped kidpoker .02. Barryg doesn't run to bad either. Thanks for the time,

-Reasons

Consolation of Philosophy

2009-10-31T02:18:00.004-05:00

I guess I can start things off here on a good note. Poker wise, I had my best day ever today. I think I killed everything I touched, though it was mostly 18s. I was able to book a 1st in a 27/45, 4th in a 180 and did well in 38s. I usually don't write about things of this sort on here because it's all pretty standard and no one cares, but i'm proud of my day. I was really hesitant about playing because of the way the month had been going. Had a few times where I doubted my game a long the way but I think I have everything pulled together for the most part. My sample in the 27s and 38s is looking pretty good and i'll hopefully be giving some looks at the softer 60s next month. I really need to get used to the variance a bit better because it still pisses me off a bit more then it should whenever I get sucked out on in a 38. I think the skill aspect of my game is up to par for the 60s but the psychological part isn't.

I made a pretty big purchase (big for a college student ok?) last week and am pretty satisfied with it. Sort of weird considering I don't really watch TV at all but it is a nice addition to my apartment. Me and my roommate went to best buy last weekend so I could pick out a TV and some speakers. As is the case with most things, I ended up spending more then I wanted to but w/e. I got a 42inch samsung plasma and a 500 watt surround sound system. This is a pretty crappy pic but it'l do for now.

The wires definitely need some cleaning up but other then that, I am very pleased. I think I sat and listened to music through it for 3 hours the other night. I put on some Bjork and it was just sick hearing the different voices coming through different speakers. That combined with a visualizer was pretty awesome.

So yeah, Halloween time. Me and my roommate decided to through a party this time around. Our last few have gotten a really good response and my friends thought it would be good to have a smaller one. I was kind of meh on the idea at first because I figured everyone would just go lame frat parties but I think we are expecting ~40 people which is a lot of our apartment. We have a ton of black lights set up and a fog machine so it's going to be sick. One of my friends even found some glow in the dark spider web stuff that we are going to put up. I guess i'm going to be an indian this year or whatever. We got come UN sensitive paint/makeup stuff and i'm going to have one of my friends just paint my body, going to be whack.

I have been doing that whole swim in a pool of mediocrity thing concerning my academics right now. I had some speech do last week that I got a zero on. I promise you I am the smartest person in that class I am now trying to pass it. My teacher decided to start in the middle of the list or something, which she has never done. Obv I was first to go and straight up didn't have anything. Really annoying. Since it can be related to my fault I didn't make a big deal about it at all. I just have to do good on everything else which shouldn't be to hard. I just know my parents aren't going to be to pleased because they wanted me to get A's and B's this semester. Getting a C in that class is pretty borderline retarded.

Started to write this and didn't finish. I do that a lot.

-Reasons

Pace Is The Trick

2009-10-07T00:56:00.004-05:00

I am having such a hard time finding an equilibrium between school, life, and everything else right now. No one can really tell when they are around me, but I
passively freak out about everything.

I had a music history quiz due online by tomorrow afternoon. We are going over early music around the 700-1100's and figuring out the origins of it really. The quiz has a lot of listening on it to identify what is what. When I open the quiz, the music examples all start playing at the same time and won't stop. I probably completely bombed the quiz. It's going to be pretty humorous when I bring my laptop to class tomorrow for the teacher and it works perfectly fine.

Our concert was pretty awesome, I felt I played really well and my violin professor even commented on how it really seemed that I was leading a lot. Being on the front stand has definitely pressured me to practice more as more responsibilities are thrown on my shoulders. It's taken a toll on my other practice time for my solo stuff and I haven't really figured out where to fit everything in. Maybe i'll take a break from poker for a few days to get everything in order.

The next concert we are going to be going on tour with is going to be sick.

Anyone who can should definitely come back it out for this.

I've hardly practiced my violin since that girl knocked and my door and bitched me out. I usually always practice at night because that's when I feel it the most. Now, I would have to go to the music building which doors shut at 11 to go practice; simply not going to happen before that. Right now I have 3 symphony pieces, a quartet, arpeggios, and the rest of my solo to learn. I really need to condition my body better to practice a few hours a day if I want to do an adequate job at it all.

Another positive outlet is needed in my life right now. For any of you that read other poker blogs probably know why. I think a good 90% of the blogs I read have depression smeared completely over them. Though it's great money, it's so unfulfilling. I am looking for some sort of soup kitchen to maybe work at 1x a week or something. When I worked at Jason's Deli, though I had to deal with morons on a daily basis, It was nice being able to converse with people about rando stuff. Being involved so deeply with poker dormants your social so much it's absurd.

I need to start making it a point to eat healthy again. There has been a few in the past weeks where I have had a single slice of bread for a meal. I really think the only option is to only get things 100% healthy. Reason being, any thing I buy that is around becomes that meal. If chips are the only thing left in the house, that is what dinner is. Disgusting.

I need this weekend already. It's my friend Mike's 21st birthday and I said he can have his party at my place. I bought him 7 shots today at his birthday dinner. I told the waiter to mix, gin, tequila, and jeagermeister in one glass and give it to him. Also got him something called the turd burglar in which the waiter wasn't even sure what was in it; good times. I'm hoping for some jazz with a friend Saturday evening as well.

Pic of the watch I am highly considering getting. Thoughts?

Sleep then up in 4.5 hour so bust out some flute, music history, then conducting. I need better habits.

-Benjamin

Paper Thin Walls

2009-10-01T18:14:00.003-05:00

Whenever I have been practicing, it's been early in the AM and I finally got a knock last night. To be honest i'm surprised it took that long. Apparently it had been pissing her off for a while and when I opened the door she was like "OK ME AND YOU NEED TO HAVE A TALK!" She started complaining about the while situation and say something about that "damn video game I always play". Obviously it had to be the pokerstars beeps and bloops as I don't play any vid games. I think she was sort of surprised how chill I was about everything. I just sort of agreed with what she said and apologized saying that if it every happens again let me know and it'l be a quick fix. In any case, I really need to practice for my lesson the next and that wasn't going to happen. I ended up going to 4am and waking up at 8am which sadly seems to be the norm a lot of weeknights. In my previous post I mentioned something about me being sick. I am finally over it now even though it took to long. I really don't want a relapse.

Poker wise, September was an awesome month. Even though I didn't get a ton of volume in, the stats came through and coaching + staking went fantastic. I really enjoy being a part if grinderschool.

Have more to talk about but I have a 3 hour rehearsal tonight for our first massive concert on Saturday.

-Reasons

Hard to Beat

2009-09-20T02:00:00.002-05:00

"If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat."

-Herschel Walker

Had no idea who that guy was until I googled "hard work quotes", and that was the one I liked the best. Just some rando football player from back in the day, though it seems he did something right. Hard work is just about the only thing that has been going on in my life as of late. My poker grind has been probably reduced to about 2/5ths what it was in the summer. I really wish I grinded harder then to make up for now. School is pretty intense so I just haven't had the time to anything else but study anything and everything music. Sleep is so very seldom during my school week. I feel like I have a sleeping disorder. I really don't understand how is that I am going to 3am every single night and getting up 6:30 for my 8am woodwinds. I think it finally caught up with me though as I am constantly blowing my nose and sipping hot tea to nurse my cold as I write this.

Poker is fantastic. My enjoyment of them game and its capabilities reached a new level when I moved out. Yeah it is easy to say that since I have been running decent as of late but i'm now realizing what I can do with it. There is just so many more perks when living in apartment rather then a dorm, much less home. I think my apartment is the nicest guy's apartment I have been in though. And yes, that is a slight brag. I'm getting on this kick though, and it might be a bad habit, but i'm really just obsessing on ways to make my apartment ballin for some reason. I've been looking at some 42 inch TV's and some nice sound systems to add to the place in the next month or two. I can't imagine being that college nit who can't go out to eat one night because he can't afford the gas money or something. Yeah that might sound a nit arrogant to all the non poker players reading this, but really i'm just venting/expressing to all those who do play.

Grinderschool/coaching has been going great. All the students and coaches on the site are pretty enjoyable to work with. I really just have an insane passion for teaching. I am starting to feel better about going into some from of education as I was rather apathetic toward it at first. Coaching hasn't really interfered with my school work yet as I have been pretty good about staying organized. I even bought some dry erase board calender to keep track of everything now. I haven't really got to play much this month because of my other obligations. But the games that I have played, have been pretty good. I feel like my 18 man game has reached a new level and can only keep improving. I have this confidence that I can beat the 38s and 60s right now and am most definitely looking forward to giving them a go. Barring some horrific run, i'll be there by November.

While it appears I am on this euphoric motivation whim, it simply just leaves me sometimes. I listen to my teachers and literally get excited about working on assignments that they give. A few hours later, you might just find me staring at the itunes visualizer for hours on end rather then doing poker or schoolwork. That sounds crazy, but it's happened. In a pure logical sense, the reasons just don't add up that cause me to do things like that. I've been searching for the cause some time now so if anyone has any advice to offer, feel free. I just hate doing work at times.

Ending my mindless ramble for the night

Other then poker and music, I freeking love soccer. I remember this song playing my Sr year before playoffs. The chorus is pretty much poker all the way.

This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name.

-Reasons

Upperclass

2009-09-04T14:31:00.006-05:00

I'm a Junior this year, and I feel old. Though I a am almost 21, I think I would rather be 18...regardless of all the new stuff you can do (not even really that much). I'm in an apartment now and I feel somewhat obligated not to slack off like I have the past few years. Right now I have more of a mindset to get all A's in all of my classes rather then being content with C's. I really have the capability to get whatever great I want, I just need the motivation. Anyways, here is some shots of my new place taken by my phone, so excuse the poor quality.

First one is sort of by the TV where everything is connected. I still need to get all those wires cleaned up...

Couch in the living room area. Both of these paintings are done by my awesome friend, Denice.

Got an L-shaped desk so now I can run laptop and desktop at the same time. I love it.

Getting out of my room in my house is so nice, there is clutter built up since I was ~5 years old I'd say.

I guess i'll keep posting pictures. Just realized I didn't do a month summary yet. Given that I was gone for 2 weeks and I had to finish up an online class, I hardly got any volume in. However, for the few games I did play it went very well.

First one is Full Tilt and Bottom one is Poker Stars. With playing and coaching/staking/bonuses/prop bets I had a 4K+ month. Feels good going into school having to pay for books and supplies.

Pics above are from my Cali trip.

Anyways, some other great new stuff has been going on. I got a lead spot as a SNG instructor at Grinderschool.com. It's still pretty small site but they are growing fairly quickly and I feel like I have a lot to add. I have already worked with a few of the members and it seems to be going well. I had a podcast interview with them which was pretty hilarious. Just sign up for a free account and you can listen to it here

Also, I "graduated" from the sngmentors program that I was doing for a good while and am now available to coach through there as well. It's a coaching/staking site so if you are interested just give me a holler. We have a very sick team.

First week of class has gone well so far, I am really enjoying everything that I decided to take. The teachers really seem to take an interest in the students learning which is awesome. I think I am starting to appreciate that a little more as my teaching experience in poker grows. As of right now I am taking 15 hours but that can potentially shoot up to 19 if I add everything in that needs to be done.

Sorry this post was so monotonous, I'll try and add more content later. Good luck in September,

-Reasons

Well that was fun

2009-08-16T02:37:00.002-05:00

I guess I can say summer was alright. I'm not really going to bother looking to see what my goals were because for something as unpredictable as summer, there is really no point in making them. School starts in ten days, and I am actually looking forward to it.

My California trip finished off pretty well, was def one of the more enjoyable ones I have been on. Around this point last year I was taking about a week break from poker, same deal second time around. I guess it's been 11+ days and counting since I have played. Not gunna lie, the break has been nice. I really hate making this entry without pictures from the trip yet but I am in the writing mood right now. These moods don't come often as I would like them to so I figured it would be best to get it done now. After my last post, the trip just got better for me really. I got up and heard the phone ring at my Grandma's house and by some chance it was for me. My cousin Alex was calling because she knew me and my family were going to be in SanFran that day. She said that there was a good show that night and since she knew me and her had similar music taste, I should go. I had never really been anywhere else in the bay area aside from the normal tourist stuff. Not to say that it isn't fun or anything, just sort of gets monotonous after a while. Living in Cali seems like a pretty decent option for me in the future, even if it's just for 6 months or something. As for the last few days, it can wait for the pictures. Pictures do an insufficient job of portraying how amazing giant red oak trees really are, i'm sure my sloppy writing would only prove worse.

I was supposed to take some online classes this summer, I was supposed to get more hours. I need this to move in to an apartment off campus. I fail. I didn't sign up for one of the classes that I needed to and I failed the other one. My advisor/violin professor is going to be pissed. This is the first class I have failed ever, makes me furious. I wouldn't be really mad if it was 100% my fault, but it's not, I swear. It is to the point where I almost pride myself in my ridiculous procrastination tendencies and still manage to scape by. It has worked for 20+ years, why stop now? I turned in my paper the exact minute it was do, I was not so fortunate with my quizzes. All of the previous assignments were due at 11:55pm 11:55pm 11:55pm etc yada yada you get the freeking point. My stupid instructor put the last one at 11:55 AM, the day before the final. It was insane unclear the way it was written out, very easy to miss. The course is EDUCATION PSYCHOLOGY and the curriculum even speaks out against unclear crap like this. I have a friend who had the same problem as me and email the prof asking if he could extend the time. Like me, she as waiting until the last day to do the quizzes. The thing about the quizzes is you can retake them like 3 times or something. If you get a C on it once, you have to wait 8 hours to retake it then you can move on. He emailed her back saying sorry he can't do anything. I emailed him a somewhat similar email and proceeded to ask him if any other students have had clarification problems like I did. First thing he said was "No, there are no other students who have had this problem". Awesome, I had a teacher lie to me. That is what pisses me off. I studies for 8 hours from then on so I could try and get an A on the final, even though that might have not even mattered. I'll be working on an email with screen shots of the emails and send it into the board of education. I'll be pretty pleased if I can pull off a refund and take the course again, 600$ is a bit much for me to be wasting on a class. I really wouldn't be making such a big deal about it if he didn't like to me and contradict the teaching methods taught in the course. Idiot's like him just life tilt me.

Positive side of this all is I am finishing moving into my apartment tomorrow. Most of the vitals were moved in when I went to go take the final the two days ago. And yeah I mentioned I needed those hours to move off campus. My school is so lol retarded they prob aren't going to even catch it. They are short on housing anyway so I seriously doubt they care. I'll have some pics posted soon of the apartment, it is way nice then I thought it would be. My roommate was nice enough to let me have the master bedroom and even let me use th L-shape desk he brought. I now have my full set up there and my laptop + additional workspace. It's freekin sick, I can't wait to get back into the grind. I am going to teach my roommate how to play and he'll fitness train me, I think I have mentioned it before. It's going to be a sweet project starting him from ground zero into a self sufficient grinder. I am not 100% sure as to how to go about doing it because I have never had a student situation such as this but I think i'll manage.

Fitness stuff is going decent I guess. I am probably still around the 7 mile mark like I was before break. It's disgustingly hard to stay healthy on vacation when you are stopping restaurant after restaurant and having amazing food shoved in our face involenterily. I went to some mall in Dallas yesterday and after trying on some clothes, I decided I really need to start working out my upper body. I had people make comments on how skinny I am getting but it's almost getting to the point where I look like a stick. I am considering trying to that 100 pushups in a row thing like I tried/failed before. Prop bet anyone?

Off to bed now, hope you all have fun owning Sunday poker donks while I set up my apartment. Holla,

-Reasons

California

2009-08-05T02:53:00.003-05:00

I went ahead and stayed up because I don't really go to bed until 6am as of late. My family and I, along with my sisters boyfriend, left for California at about 2:30 am yesterday morning. It's been retarded trying to get on a normal schedule with everyone because I haven't had to operate under "normal" pretenses for a while now. Our plane left at about 6am and I was able to get some sleep, it really wasn't that restful though. West coast is set about 2 hours back so I guess I got here at about 10? I don't really remember it all to well. I am somewhat pissed though because it is the worst I have eaten in a while. I had some breakfast sub from Quizno's at the airport, it had bacon on it. That cooked everything off and was followed by hotlinks, chips, cookies, and more fatty meats. I'll be really mad if I lose all the progress I have been making as of late. I did manage to run ~3 miles though in some close to perfect Cali weather though. If it was anywhere close to this in Texas, I'd be a marathon runner by now.

Seven hour car ride tomorrow is going to suck. Not because I hate riding in cars, but because there are 6 of us in a 5 seater. I am really hoping to be able to zone in and finally start my online class though. I called one of my friends who is taking the class as well and it sounds like I am pretty behind. We are supposed to have a whole book read and have each chapter summarized by Monday and I haven't read but a few pages. The content seemed pretty interesting for the most part though, it is something concerning how bad the school systems suck these days. I definitely feel that, so I am hoping it shouldn't be to hard to get into the work. Good for me the internet sucks here too. I fired up a few tables and was timing out/had to reset the software numerous times. Playing on Full Tilt didn't really help though I guess as everyone has problems enough as is. I find it hilarious that stars just 1 up'd FTP on the bonus thing. I'll try and grind out both though to get the free 400$ After I am done playing on FTP i'll shoot them an email saying it was nice playing on there site but they won't see my again until I get another bonus or rakeback. Would be sick if I could run good there.

Short post but i'm off to bed. Have a good one,

Ben

Take It All Away

2009-08-01T02:53:00.005-05:00

So this month proved to be pretty awesome in many different aspects, at least it looks that way on paper. The music festival went great as well as my trip to college station. I think in terms of dollars, this has been my best month.

This was my playing graph but take on ~600 from coaching and staking then ~500 from lessons and gigs then it all adds up pretty nice. I am really happy to see this all come together since music and poker is sort of what I want to do for a living. My graph would look a whole lot better if it weren't for that for that massive swing 2/3rds of the way though, culprit: 180s on a Sunday afternoon. The whole result pretty much ended in me being down 700$ in them but I didn't let it tilt me. I have been tilt free since April. The swing at about 600 games in was just me running really bad at 16s, the instant shot up was me loading every 27/18 there was and running really good in them. I have a small sample in the 27s right now, but i'll take 15%.

Coaching has been going great. All my immediate students (excluding friends) had some plus EV months.

599 $0.43 $3 13% $258

479 $0.96 $6 15% $461

352 $0.24 $3 7% $83

362 $1.82 $6 32% $660

Not the best volume. But hey, they are getting somewhere and i'm really proud of them for it.

The prop bet between me and Vertek is going pretty well so far, though being only halfway through I know that anything can happen. For those of you who are wondering though I am ahead by ~2500 at this point. Going to keep grinding it out though.

Alright well some of you are aware of that prop bet that I have going now too. The bet was 10-1 wagering 300 in opponents favor a long with some other stipulations. Pretty sure I have it all locked up as my opponent isn't really putting forth an effort. I've really taken it to a while new level for personal reasons though. I started a half marathon log on two plus two for advice on how to go about everything and it has proved pretty useful thus far. I have been training for it consistently and eating insanely healthy since the 13th. My log is here if any of you would like to follow. I started at a little over 1 mile about 20 days I guess and i'll hopefully be doing 7 tomorrow. Still not sure as to what sort of time I should aim for though. Any suggestions? I have cut out all the crap in my diet and have been eating pure healthy stuff mainly, a lot of fruit and vegetables. Sort of weird that my weight hasn't been this low since freshman year of highschool, but whatever. I guess I am being healthy about it.

I have to take the final for that online class I am supposed to be doing in 14 days. 7 of those days between now an then I am going to be gone in cali doing much better things then school. I am going to find some way to cram as I can't afford to fail that class at all. If I did it would almost undoubtedly mean I have to tack on an extra semester of school which is something I really don't want to do.

Despite all the "good" things going on as of late, my moral has been mediocre at best and I really can't figure it out. I was in this same pissed off mood around the start of college last year though too, cept this time I am somewhat looking forward to it because I get an apartment. One of the things that I have been tinkering with in my mind is that relationships, no matter what kind, simply aren't what they used to be because of the nature of college. They are harder to keep up and so many of them just sort of turn into catch up relationships. Ya know those kind where you have lunch with them every few months and talk about some old crap then do the same thing a few months down the road. It all just seems to be lacking substance. I guess this could be a bit of pokers fault, going to SFA, or just my fault...maybe a little of both. As far as the poker goes I have second guessed it a bit more as of late just because the examples I have seen in front of me. I know a lot of great players who done well for themselves in the game but they all seem somewhat depressed in some form or fashion. I dread this. I am really confident in me saying that though music would bring me a less lucrative career as far as money goes, I would much rather prefer doing that as a living more then poker. It is just more fulfilling it seems.

I guess I started to ramble there, but that had just been some stuff on my mind as of late and it feels good to get it all down. We are playing a small show at some coffee shop tomorrow and i'm pretty stoked. I haven't played with The Southern Sea since the festival. Going to update more from now on. Hope you all have a good start to the month.

-Reasons

House of Cards

2009-07-12T23:04:00.002-05:00

Well after donking off money money at the beginning of them month, I ran good while in College Station and had a decent day today hopefully shaping up these days to come. To be honest I was getting quite frustrated as slowly bleeding 1k+ over 800 games is about my threshold of pain as far as poker playing goes. Break even would be better, just not bleeding. Anyways, my prop bet starts in 35 minutes to be exact and goes on until the 13th of next week. I really needed today as a confidence booster because I was not feeling up to it. Vertek will be happy to know that I forgot about a summer class I had to take (hi Vertek) and it starts on Tuesday. I'm hoping that me and my friends scheduling regular skype sessions will enable us to be pretty efficient to minimize the time.

College station was a nice breath. Cornerstone, although I had a great time, was pretty hectic and I really just wanted to relax a little bit. Being at home wasn't doing it for me the past couple of days so getting out was awesome. I left sometime Wednesday afternoon and after making about 4 or 5 direction mistakes, got to my friend Erin's apartment. Didn't do much the first night cept watch a few movies but the second her roommate took us to see some artiest called Magic Girl. Her myspace doesn't really do her justice as all because they are pretty crappy records but she sounded awesome live. I can really dig an acoustic artist that plays with a lot of soul. Slow Southern Suicide sounds pretty decent on her page though if you decide to check her out. I was about to get a little bit of volume in while everyone was at work or school and managed to pull over of my begging of the month swong. Wbmustang helped me sort of my HEM before I left so I was able to play all my games with a peace of mind. So yeah, was def a nice grind before having to get back to the grind of normal life.

Poker has been bothering me quite a bit, I think. I'm having a super hard time pinpointing what has left me in a mental slump as of late and I guess poker could be the culprit. By nature, I am an extremely social person that likes to be around people all the time so I guess this can be expected. I'm not sure if that is a life leak or what but something is up. The money is to good to stop playing and get another job so I think i'll be working at some soup kitchen or something of the like when school starts up. That way, i'll still be a helpful being within the society but have the freedom to quit or not show up if things get a little hectic. All this isolation is taking a toll on me and i'm not a fan. Seems that I have less friends that I can have deep conversations with as of late, though that could just be how college works out. I sort or still question if I am at the right college or not anyhow. I am about 100% sure I would be more satisfied elsewhere so is it stupid for me to just want to stick it out 2 more years? To stay on topic, I have noticed a trend in poker players blogs. I think about 95% of the ones that I read sound depressed to a degree, I don't want to be that guy. Thoughts?

On a happier note, me and my roommate got a call from the apartments that we applied for next semester and we are supposed to move in August 14th. That timed about pretty well because I get from Cali on the 11st and that will give me some extra days to finish up the prop bet if I don't get a lot of volume in while being out of state. Having an apartment is going to make this school year close to 100% better then last year. My own room is going to a luxury as well.

Tomorrow I start back on track with half marathon training. One of Erin's roommates wanted to run it with me and Chad as well so I told her I'd give her 100$ if she wins and she owes me nothing if I win. She has a whole let better chance of beating me then Chad does so hopefully that will give me some extra motivation. So yeah, I have another violin gig on Tuesday a long with school and more band gigs coming up. Will keep yall posted. Have a good one and thanks for taking the time to read.

-Ben

Cornerstone

2009-07-05T13:21:00.013-05:00

I got back in the A.M. last night after another 18 hour ride and am pretty worn out still, but had an interesting experience while I was there. First off, I'm baffled at how much sucky music there is being played right now. This is not just me being me, typical music snob, but telling the truth. Have a listen for yourself.

This is one of the bands that headlined the entire festival

I'd say the majority of the music at Cornerstone was like that. One really had to go out of the way to find anything decent.

The majority of the set up was like this as seen above. People would run generators from there cars and power the show that way. If you were to walk down the road you would have two bands playing on either side of you...then another about 100 feet down the road as well.

Saw this guy screaming and being "hardcore" so I really just had to take a pic.

I am pretty immune to awful car rides and long road trips because of multiple trips to Cali, Florida, and New Mexico so the 18 hours up there wasn't to bad. Brad let me pick music the entire way up there which was nice. In the 32 hours (round trip) that we were in the car, we didn't listen to the same album twice. His 6 year old daughter was in the car which was a bit much at times, but wasn't unbearable since she is pretty well behaved. She is obsessed with telling jokes that make absolutely no sense and would do so for hours on end.. We got to Illinois at ~2 AM and had to set up camp. I stayed up the entire night before because I was used to going to bed at 5am and had to leave at 6:30. I really didn't feel the need to go to sleep having to wake up that early so I figured that was my best option. Because of everything going on the car, I might have gotten 2 hours of sleep on the way up there. After setting up the tent and everything, I was able to crash pretty fast because I had gotten about 3 hours of sleep in the past 40 hours. I was able to get about 8 hours of sleep before the heat woke me up. I was pretty much covered in sweat because the tent was acting like an oven at that point. Ugh, no showers for the next 3 days either. I got dressed and headed to the merch tent to promote our show and try and sell some cd's.

A few people came up and listened then said they would come check us out. Most of them commented how it was nice to actually hear someone sing. A few hours before our 7:30 show, we went to go practice back at the camp site. I was able to get some decent shots.

Brad and Ray ^

Mark

The Group

Raymoth

Ray does a bunch of solo stuff and is pretty fly on his own.

Check him out on youtube there

The stage we got to play on was pretty big, biggest I think anyone of us had played on. We somehow lucked out and got an hour to set up and sound check. We had a ton of instruments on stage so that was really fortunate. We didn't have the biggest crowd or anything, but a good amount of people came to watch. We all played really well and got way into it. For some reason the sound people jacked up and had the balance thrown off a bit. Some girl named Liz that was working the booth for Faceless came to check us out and really liked it. She said sort of heard the sound stuff but understood what was going on so thats fine I guess. You all should check out that link. The organization is against human trafficking in all forms. Pretty interesting stuff. I'll add it to by blog roll.

Corey right before we started...

After we played, I was able to finally hear some decent music. I think there were at least 6 bands out of Tyler which was pretty awesome. The scene around here is getting a little better I guess. Texas even had there own stage at the festival, which was ballin. Anyways, the next day I went to get some food and heard some string on the next tent over. I obviously go to check it out and heard one of the best bands I had in a long time. The sound was sort of like a Regina Spektor type; really creative and original. The name was Brook Waggoner.

Samantha just chillin

I noticed it was a redhead playing the piano (didn't know they existed) and a cute violinist so I obtrusively made my way to the front of the stage and plopped my self down for the rest of the set. I don't see these types of people everyday ya know.
I talked to the violinist for about 10-15 min after the show and felt sort of retarded because I hadn't taken a shower in 3 days nor had shaven. She was pretty awesome though; her and Brook were graduates from Belmont up in Nashville ( I almost went there). Hearing that really made me second guess why I am in Nac because people that cool just don't come out of SFA. Whatever, i'll prob do what I can to go see them if they come to Texas at some point. Laura (the violinist) said that played South by Southwest last year and might do so this coming year. Our label manager mentioned that we might play the same festival as well so it would be awesome to see them again.

Violinist for Brook W

Brook Waggoner

After I got done talking to the violinist I went back to the tent to help Ray promote his show a bit more. While walking around I head a banjo playing so def had to check that out. They were playing some bluegrass standards which was awesome. I asked them how long he was going to be playing for and he only said about 10 more min. Any longer I would have gotten my violin out and jammed with. I would have felt like a douche though because there was this other guy trying to play and had no idea what he was doing. HE WAS FREaKING PLAYING THE VIOLIN WITH THE WRONG HANDS. I had never seen anyone do this in my like and it just irked me to no end. Whatever, I tried to ignore it as much as I could which wasn't hard as his violin got no sound out of it. I talked to the banjo player a for a bit and he said they were have a square dance at 1am that night. I would have loved to join but we decided we were going to leave once Ray was done playing his show.

After Ray killed his set hard and sold a few cd's we left right away to get a head start. It was a good thing we did because it started to rain pretty hard as we left. Only good thing about staying was getting to see a bunch of retarded wannabe hardcore kids slosh around in the mud to screamo. Entertainment value on that is pretty high.
Shiny Toy Guns was playing that night as well and I would have liked to see them. But yeah, they aren't one of my fav bands really and I was much more interested in getting home and taking a shower. etc. Instead of camping we stayed in Hotel that night because Brad's daughter was having some episodes. I think it was a combo of her sleeptalking and some cut she had gotten previously. In any case, I was glad for the hotel and the Taco Bell that was conveniently located right next to it. All the food at the festival was def overpriced and way unhealthy/not that good. (Not saying that Taco Bell is healthy or anything though). We got up around 9 the next day and arrived back in Tyler around 2. Overall it was a really run trip and a really nice break from life. Most def excited to do it again. At some point in time there I did miss locate my phone which is really tilting. I really need a new one though, it's just going to be really annoying getting peoples numbers again. I also hope I can use the same number too. Not sure if that is possible because I don't have my sim card though. Back to real life.

Not getting any exercise in these past few days has made me feel bleh so i'll be hitting a lot of cardio these next few weeks'months to get properly prepared for the half mara. As you have read in my previous post, me and vertek are propping this next month so I am going to have to focus really hard and stay on top of everything while making the most use out of my time. If anything, I wan't this bet to teach me time management a little better. Anyways, I'm going for a jog now then prob doing the std sunday pokers. I apologize for any typo's in this post because it's long and I don't feel like proof reading. Have a good one,

-Reasons

So amazing...

Month Review... Some Stuff Coming Up

2009-07-01T02:19:00.003-05:00

The end of June was pretty bleak as far as poker goes. In my last post I mentioned that I was supposed to be College Station to see some friends and those plans fell through the roof for about the millionth time. I played life tilty poker that day and dropped a couple hundred which propelled me into some funk I haven't been able to get out of yet. If I hadn't been playing some 45s it prob wouldn't be as bad as it is but being done 1k over last 500 games is meh. Strangely enough I feel fine though. I think during my last 1k swing I got pretty pissed. Now, I don't really care. I won't belabor anything, here is the month graph.

I ran 12% in 16/18s, which I am pleased about considering that its my main game and what I plan to play next month in the prop bet vrs Vertek. I'll prob just stay away from 45s so I can stay focused...we'll see. So all in all my month shaped up to be around 2k and some change. 1500$ from poker, 200$ from bonuses, and about ~400 or so from staking and coaching. I guess i'll take it but next month better be an improvement. Bleh, poker is getting to me though. I am a people person and I need to be around people more. I don't like being in solitude as much as I have been.

I leave for Cornerstone Music Festival in about 2 hours. Brad (lead singer) said we were leaving at 6:30am so I just decided to stay up until because I have been going to bed around 5:00 Am. I'm going to bring my laptop but I have no idea if they have any internet. We are camping the entire time so it's probably not likely. Small chance I might sneak into a cafe to maybe do some hand histories for my students. I haven't take a few days off in a while from playing though, I'm actually looking forward to it.

Her new cd came out the 23rd so pick it up if you enjoy female artists....

Hope you all have a good July. I'll try and take a lot of pics of the festival. Be back in a few days with a trip report,

-Benjamin

A little bit has changed

2009-06-25T03:51:00.004-05:00

I was looking a day or two ago and saw that I started this blog on the 28th of June last year. I guess I feel that is appropriate to sort of recap how things have gone since then. Some things have changed a bit....

I was up around this same time, supposedly playing around with my new 22 inch monitor. I am pretty happy now to say that I have two :) I was playing the 6 dollar nine mans, now I am playing 16 and 27 18 mans. (im getting crushed in 27s at the moment but we'll talk about that later). Wbmustang was one of my first students and ironically enough, I was going over hand histories today....cept I didn't get paid, whats up with that? Pretty much what I am trying to get at is that within the last year, I HAVE made some progress and I guess I am a little proud. I have really poured poker and music on myself and I am getting some decent results. I am not the best poker player or musician there is right now thought. I guess that is always going to be the case since I split myself between the two. Tommy Angelo did it, why can't I...right?

Last couple hundred games have gone really crappy but I am taking it well, better then ever actually. I used to tilt to where I would berate fish etc and maybe bang the desk or two. It sounds stupid but every player used to have some form of tilt or another. It's really not the easiest thing to get over either. I'm really proud to say that I am pretty much over my tilt problem. I can watch me self get two outed and not even wince. It has done worlds for my game. I really only think the way to get over it is go through massive growing pains that accompany this sick games and shove it down your throat.

Friday 26th

I've done that 3 times within the last month now, start a post then not finish it. Instead of scrapping it I guess i'll leave it up.

So today I wanted a change of pace; I went to a nice coffee shop with free wifi and good food to get some grinding done. To my pleasant surprise, they had live music and an art show going on. The musicians were two guys, one bald and other with long grey hair, that played guitar and sang. A lot of there stuff consisted of the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and James Taylor type stuff so I was really feeling it. When I was between sets I requested that they play Michelle by the Beatles. I figured they might be able to because they had played quite a few songs off of Rubber Soul by now.
One of my good friends/ex is named after that song so I really like hearing it. They sort of learned it on the spot right then and managed to get through it. It certainly wasn't perfect but I still enjoyed it. I made sure to leave them a nice tip when I left. Anyways, my games wen't pretty good to despite my laptop meltdown in the middle of the session. I haven't played 45s in about two months but decided to put in a session. I also forgot to update my HUD for my laptop so I was obviously playing without. For about the first hour or two things were going fine, I was getting deep in plenty of games and playing fairly well. For some reason, my laptop sort of just freezes. I wait for about 30 seconds for it to respond and nada. Not sure about how much equity I lost in the restart period but I couldn't really pull it together after that, I bricked just about everything. Also, when I started back up my auto reg started regging me for 6/18s. Obviously I could have made a bit more playing other games but I did fine in those. All in all I really enjoyed the change of scenery and am going to be playing there once a week or something. They kept on bringing me refills of hazelnut lattes, sort of hard to pass up.

Plans for next month involve a friendly prop bet between me and Vertek (new blog added) for most profit. Me and him both thing a little more motivation in both of our parts is in order so we are making it 1-1 with a bet of 200. I'm not really going to post my grind schedule on here or anything because I want to make it close. Gl to the both of us though, we really just want it to be the most profitable month we both have had. Oh, on another note, I am really happy to say that my check finally came in from poker stars. A lot of you know about the processor problem that people in the US have been having with everything. If you don't just look at any other blog and see. Anyways, I requested for it on the 8th, it supposedly got mailed the 12th, and it finally got here today. It was from some shady looking envelop from Canada haha. I really don't care, i'm going to deposit it tomorrow and hope that it works.

This is more less the stuff I have been grinding to lately. This and Pretty Lights mostly. It's not to thick but has a beat to it and gets me in the zone. Give it a shot if you are looking for some new tunes give it a shot. Some fresh stuff is always nice.

Alright well i'm headed to bed. Going to hit up the asian food tomorrow afternoon with the sister then head to College Station to see some friends for the weekend. Have a good rest of the month.

-Ben

Summer Day

2009-06-19T04:32:00.005-05:00

I got sort of busy since the trip to San Antonio, hence the lack of updates. I even started to jot some stuff down while I was there that is saved, just don't feel like posting it. Anyways, reason being for the absence is just my normal stuff, music and poker stuff.

I started up violin lessons, and am very happy to be teaching again. I actually have a viola student which is pretty cool because I get to improve on my alto clef reading, something very important. Sure the hourly isn't as good as poker and it takes a long time to get to and from the teaching site but it is a much more rewarding feeling to teach someone music, something that everyone can benefit from. Aside from that, I have had multiple band practices with The Southern Sea and that is going great. The practices are pretty "tight" in terms of music and everything is lining up great. We leave in about 10 days or so for Illinois and I am very much looking forward to camping the whole way there and back.

On a side note, you will have to excuse my incoherent writing tonight in all aspects. It's about 5am and I really don't know why I am writing this anyway.

Onto the poker...

Unlike I said in my previous post, I trashed 180s after about a day lol. I really just don't the fact the variance is so sick and they take a long time to load. 18s are just my cup of tea and I have been studying them pretty hard. I have also moved up to the 27s and am starting to mix those in. Hoping that those are a nice boost to the hourly.

Whatever I don't feel like writing anymore. I'll have more updates in the future.

Souther Sea baby....

Some waterfall in San Antonio

Me and my friend Kacy I hadn't seen in forever...

Have a good one and talk to yall soon.

-Reasons

Month Review/Trip Report/June Goals

2009-05-31T21:28:00.003-05:00

May is finally over, and it's been quite an eventful month. I made the transition from living on campus to back at home for the summer and now I feel I am finally settling in. I'm really not sure where to start as I want to cover a bit, so how about with the la musica...

Other then helping out with graduation and playing a wedding gig yesterday, I haven't done much with music because I have been cramming in poker trying to meet my monthly goals. I really don't think there is anything worse then playing an outdoor wedding in Texas. The heat combined with a tux made it really hard to play because my chin rest was getting so slippery from all the sweat. However, everything was kept pretty short and I didn't have to stay outside that long. Bride and groom pretty much said their vows or whatever and it was over, not bad. Oh yeah, I think Texas is one of the few states where you'll find people in the audience drinking beer while the ceremony is going on. It is a nice change of pace from poker though...and all in all, I really enjoy it. I have at least two students lined up for the summer and I wouldn't mind having one or two more. One of them plays the viola actually, so that'l be good practice. As far as band stuff goes, I don't think I have anything going until the Cornerstone Festival next month which is going to be sweet. I did try and practice with The Southern Sea the other day but I had been feeling slightly under then weather and did not feel like driving to Greenville. http://www.cornerstonefestival.com/ < check out the link if you are in the area and want to hear some good music.

Onto the trip...

My friends Shepler and Chad (imaballa578 on stars) convinced me to take a live trip to Winstar in Oklahoma this past week. I tend to try and avoid live pokers because people tilt and online is more profitable, but you gota change it up every now and then. Anyways, Winstar is now the 5th largest casino in the world actually, which is pretty sick. Sort of a shame that they have all those retarded rules about table games. Rules such as no craps, roulette, bacarat, and the like. They do have blackjack and some other table games, just not that overly exciting ones. For the most part it is just a vast sea of slot machines printing money that any mid aged degen feeds it. It's really quite pathetic to see them do such a thing. One could ask what is the different then the tards who lose at poker I guess. Only thing is, at least they are using their brain to try and out think someone else, though sometimes it doesn't seem so.

Anyways, so after we get there and reg for the tournies, I am a bit hungry and want to check out the hotel so I grab a tournie structure sheet to look at back at the hotel. Shepler stayed for cash since he is a live cash junkie but I opted to go chill back at the hotel and put the donkament structure in sng whiz that I would hopefully get to use. Sort of nerdy, but it seemed fun. The normal structure was set for a 100 players that paid the top 9. Freeking first place shipped 35% of the prize pool which seemed pretty heavy. Obviously the correct thing to do was shove sick wide to get some chips to make a run for it. After going over a few scenarios in whiz, an hour passes and it's about time to go to the tournie so we can grab some food before hand. me and Chad go to some food place close to the poker room to grab some dank burgers to tie us over the donkfest. Fast forward an hour and Chad bustos getting in his aces to some drooler chasing a draw and me and Shepler have about average stacks. I don't play a hand for a while. First account that I remember was that I iso'd some limper with JJ oop and c bet a K high board and took it down. After about the second hour I had ~15bb and it was time to start picking off limpers. After about an oribt or two I get QJo in the bb and the btn and sb complete so thats an easy jam. They just looked befuddled when I did so and were commenting how even if I didn't have a hand I deserved to win. IT'S ALMOST AS IF THE DONKS WERE TRYING TO LEARN SOMETHING! If there was a donk that was going to survive the natural selection process, I guess it would have been him lol. So this one middle eastern guy sits down a little late and he pretty much thinks he is the nuts and I almost give him credit for actually knowing what he was doing until I got into a hand with him. I have about 17bb in the sb now and I look down at A2, my fav hand. Now I had just been pretty aggro and passed up a spot a hand or two because my image was starting to get pretty laggy, something I didn't want to happen. Anyways, he limps in early to middle pos which is retarded anyways and I sort of pause then ship. He like trips out and starts rambling in some whack voice then mucks and tables JJ face up LOL. I tease him and show him the ace which pisses him off even more. About an hour later I ship on his sb with ATo and he just gets pissed and snap calls with 24s. He flops the open ender and I somehow hold to the river. Does that really make any sense for him to fold JJ but snap call 24 lol? Anyways, I get down the final two tables (12 get paid) with about 12bb. After blinding down do about 7bb i ship with A6 otb and donk out to some guy calling with 88 from the bb. STD. All in all line tounies tilt me hard, at least this one did. I started to loosen up a bit at the end and start making a specticle of my poison dart frog I brought for my card protector (jade elephant last time lol) to keep me from boring to tears.

After a food break we all move onto cash. Me and Shep decided to sit at 2/5 while chad had been grinding 1/2 for a while and doing pretty well. I am the youngest guy at my table sort of try and create a gambly image so I can get paid later on. I just kind of flop my money down and start talking with everyone around me etc trying to get a feel of the table. After seeing a pot or two, I find out that the guy directly to my left is the biggest fish at the table. Run bad in seat draw obv. Anyways, first playable and I get is AQ in mp. I make it 25 pre and get snapped from fish and called from a passive looking middle aged woman. I like the flop, which comes ATX and I lead for 50 and get called pretty fast from both of them. Turn is Q which sort of makes me feel meh that KJ just got there but I lead for 150 anyway and they both fold. Glad the hand ended there. Some tag had been playing to my right that was on some tilt now cuz he stacked off about 400$ a few hands ok. He goes and finds about 300$ and buys back on so I know he is playing on tight tilt now. He hadn't really C bet a flop when he missed so I figured this next spot seemed good to take. I am otb and a loose fish limps in ep and the tag bunps it up 25, I complete with j8s and the fish does as well. Flop is pretty good for me as it is 236 with two diamonds give me a flush draw and two overs. The both check and I lead for 50 and they fold pretty fast. Next hand I get is about an orbit later with the tilty tag at this point. He overlimps in later pos and I have AKs and bump it up to 40 to try and iso someone. I get a call from a player oop then the tag tanks for a sec then ships in 50bb. I figure he is doing this with smaller to mid pps and weaker aces so I ship in my 700$ and get a insta fold out of the oop caller. He mumbles something about not wanting to see an ace. To my please the flop comes A66AX and I ship it with a boat. He tables KK and storms off lol. A few hands later I am up about a buy in and my table breaks. Thats cool, guess it's break time. Won't really bore about the rest of 1/2 since it pretty much consisted of my iso raising anything suited or connected in pos and just c betting when I know some donk missed. Pretty much like printing money. Overall the trip was pretty fun but I would never want to be a live pro. The people tilt me to much and the money isn't as good until one can beat the higher levels. I can have ea 600$ roll online and make way more then playing 1/2 live in which someone would want to have a 8k+ roll. Chad about broke even for the trip and Shepler was down a bit after playing some whack 5/10. I sort of talked to him into doing it at the beg of the trip. He is def plus ev there for sure. So yeah, 3 hour drive him and back to the grind of sngs...

Without missing a beat, I get a session with my 18 man mentor about some leaks that I had been having. Since some of my villains grind the same games and read this, I won't go into any details or anything. Needless to say, I felt good about my game and needed to get in a lot of volume so that I could ship platinum star. I went on a nice little stretch at the 18s to cap of the month with platinum and about 2k profit. I played 200 games today without even getting up from my chair today, pretty proud of that one. It only took about 7.5 hours lol.

After a bad start to the month, I pulled out of it at the end...

Plans for June pretty much consist of me playing a ton of 180s, maybe about 2k of them and seeing how I do there. They are a bit more profitable. I just need to learn to fade the variance. On a different note. Coaching for this summer is pretty much getting under way and I think I am working with about 5 students now on a regular basis. They are all doing really well and have shown a lot of progress. Im getting them to sop up all the dead money in those micro 18s lol. All of them are doing something a bit different though, some pay for hh reviews while others just get coaching or a staking coaching thing as well. I wish them all the best.

So a little off of the poker finally, I am finally getting back onto running and trying not to loose the swagger for it that I developed toward the end of the semester. I had been a bit sickish the past week like I had mentioned previously but that seems to be over now. Maybe it's a bit of back tracking but I would like to be to 6-7 miles solid at the end of the month. I'm throwing in some push ups there as well...Half marathon is only in a few months. Really freekin weird though, I think I have lose close to 5 pounds since I have been home. Some people commented how I look a bit more thin latley. Only thing is, I was never really big to begin with. I think I weighed about 175 my freshman year of high school and am getting close to 155 now. My parents are always tying to get my to eat good and such because they pretty much think I am shrinking. Maybe I should stop eating 3 bowls of cereal a day and have more meat?

Alright well pushing everything aside, I'm pretty much dedicating these next few days to friends. I haven't got to see a large majority of my friends and I have been home for two weeks. I feel pretty bad about that but I have just been so busy trying t squeeze this and that in I just haven't had time. This month should be packed though as well. One of my older cousins is graduating from some military thing he went to in San Antonio so i'll be going to that this coming week. My Aunt and Uncle from Cali are coming down as well to stay with us, def looking forward to that. Probably in the next week i'll be going to Nac for a short while to stay with some friends then up to College Station to stay with more. So yeah, going to be a fun eventful month, and I am starting with IHOP tomorrow. Have a good one,

-Benjamin

Southern Comfort

2009-05-20T01:57:00.003-05:00

So in the time that I have been home, this past week has pretty much been dedicated to me hanging out with friends, it's been great. Would take quite a bit of cyberspace to recap, so I guess i'll just be hitting the highlights.

This past Friday was was filled up quite a bit with family. I am glad I made it home as I got to hang out with my sisters and parents, something that I hadn't been able to do for a while. Quite a bit of Star Trek had been viewed in our household when I was younger so obviously we went to go see the new movie. I must say that the movie was pretty solid. I have seen just about every episode of the old and new ones and that movie was really good about playing the little nuances that it could put in there. Some of the comic relief was a bit much at times, but nothing to spoil the movie about. After the movie, my sisters and I went to IHOP and hung out there until at least 2. It was a good time catching up on everything.

My middle sister who just graduated college with a major in bio is taking a year off from everything and is going to be working a lot. She has expressed some interest in poker so i'm going to be teaching her. Now, you all know by now that I am proud with my current avatar, hers is pretty solid as well.

Took us a while to finally choose one but this one seems like the most optimal choice for right now... try and not tilt to much lol.

As for my own playing, not much has gone down since getting home. Like I said previously, I am sort of deeming this my goof off week/get back into the groove. I'll be hitting the tables hard starting next week. I also somewhat refuse to play when I have a dirty room, I just can't think as well for some reason. I have been to lazy and distracted to clean it so since being home. Every time I think I just might get around to it, something happens or someone calls and I am gone for the night. I guess it's a good problem to have though.

That's all I really feel like writing for now. I think I'll spill some more ink tomorrow, hopefully with more interesting content. Have a good night all.

-Benjamin

Packing

2009-05-15T14:31:00.003-05:00

I think I am about 50/50 in terms of whether I leave or not today. I still need to call one or two people before I go, just not sure if that is going to happen. So while I wait for some calls back I figure'd I would write one last one as my room slowly empties. I guess it's only right that I jot one last post since most of my writing is done on this barely adequate desk.

A few hours later...

Right so I am going to be home at 9:30-10:00ish. I just tuned in my application for an apartment this next semester. Some % I might be getting my own condo next year, would be awesome. Anyways, I have a sched now so no post really. Hope everyone's summer starts out nice.

-Ben

I'd Like To Close My Eyes And Go Numb

2009-05-11T12:27:00.002-05:00

For some reason I couldn't sleep last night. I guess it was just another case of my body being worn out but my mind not cooperating with I, all humans have that problem though I think. One of my friends called me to go swimming yesterday evening. I didn't have a whole lot of spare time but it was hot and sticky outside and I needed some physical activity since I had put it off all last week. I hadn't even been to the pool on campus and I am going to be a junior next year. Shortly after I made my way up the practice rooms and practiced for my piano final the next day. I wasn't worried about it all, I was making an A in that class anyhow. Violin upper level juries I wasn't so much worried about either. I owned my concert, know my scales pretty well, and just had to play another Bach Partida that is straight forward. After about an hour or two of practicing, I decide to leave at 11:15 to just chill and get some good sleep.

I was feeling rather lethargic by around midnight. I hadn't done much of anything that evening, just the usual review some hh's and chat with people, typical evening for me. I really needed to do my laundry though, my wardrobe that is available for wearing officially consists of white v-neck t's at the moment. Last week of school though, who cares? I should go through my clothes in right now, but am to immersed in writing this currently. So while I was doing the norm chatting with friends, I saw that said girl was on, the one I talked about in previous post. Not going to get into it to much, but we are supposed to talk sometime this week; I just would like some closure really. I'm getting frustrated/going insane with the whole situation really. Is all the complication really needed? I have somehow managed to avoid stupid drama my entire college career really, sure would hate to see some come up.

I lay in been for what must have been 2 hours, I tried to go to sleep at one. Listening to Bart Hanson talk about betting to induce a check raise bluff on the river just wasn't doing it for me right now. I decided to pop on the headphones as I try and fall asleep but that just wasn't doing it for me at the moment. I would be surprised if they above words in that sentence even applied to my life in the future. I enjoy listening to it though and it makes me think about the game. Thinking about the game is good. Unsure what time I actually fell asleep, I am just going to assume somewhere around the 3am time, sounds about right. Really not to positive to when my piano final was, I attempted to get up extra early and succeeded actually. I woke up at 6:45 and felt great. I don't how the whole no sleep and feeling good thing worked about but I wasn't going to argue. Shower and breakfast then walk to the music building. It's so stupid hot/humid outside right now, I hate Texas for it. I'm not helping the matter by not owning a presentable pair of shorts that I can wear to class, and I refuse to wear gym shorts. And besides the gym shorts I do have are soccer wants. Guy's don't need to be looking at my legs. It's at least 90 and just being outside can make one sweat, gross.

I showed up over an hour early for my piano final. Pretty optimal because I hadn't practiced my solo to perfection the night before, this gave me the chance to. Ten minutes before we had to get the site reading piece to transpose into a different key. After trying to play it for a minute or two, I figured out it was the theme song to the office, awesome. I made an A in piano this semester, ship it.

Even though I still need to get into my concert black for my upper levels, I wanted to practice for a bit to get the music in my fingers, then change. I just have to chalk it up to experience I guess because I just haven't been letting the nerves get to me like I have been previous auditions and such. I practiced my Beethoven quite a bit, especially the last page because that had the only run on it that gave me a significant amount of trouble. Scales went fine too, Ab was the only one pissing me off. But really though, what are the odds of them picking that one. I get it up to par, play the rest ~24 of them that I have to know and call it quits on them. For some reason I sort of skipped G because I didn't figure they were going to pick that either, just because it's so easy. I walk back to my down and crack up some Incubus, Megalomanian on A Crow Left of the Murder specifically. That's the song I would listen to before soccer games to get pumped up, and it still gave me the chills. That right there, is what music is about. After changing I go back to the practice room to warm up. I get through all my stuff and decide I am going to do fine. No need to over do it. I go downstairs to wait to be called in and they are running late. Whatever i'll just browse two plus two on my itouch.

Mr. Moon had me play D major and melodic minor which was great. It was the first scale I started working on my freshman year. Dr. Rachev had me play G haha, the one i didn't practice. No big deal though. I stil got through it easy. It's pretty insane how good I ran in getting those scales picked for me. Definately the easiest ones. My Bach went great too, he didn't have me take the repeat that I was planning on taking. Playing that piece made my left arm hurt really bad, as an muscle ache bad, not to sure why but I'm glad I didn't have to wear myself out before the Beethoven, its like a 8 minute piece or something. Mr. Moon said he didn't even need to hear the Beethoven (he accompanied me in my recital), but Rachev still needed to. Well, I got through 1/6th of the piece and they said it was fine. Those are all the signs of jury gone will, I am really pleased. I Hope all my other finals go that well.

The afternoon should be nice. I'm going to go put my laundry in get some studying done and take my Music History and Lit exam a few days early so I don't have to worry about studying for that and my Music Theory final at the same time. Strings studio party is also tonight which I am looking forward to. Let's hope I get some closure today too.

-Reasons

No Point

2009-05-10T23:05:00.004-05:00

I really wanted to get a post done but I sort of fell out of the mood. I think i'll do one when I have some time tomorrow

I have upper level violin juries tomorrow as well as piano final.

Carmina Burana went fantastic the other day. Pretty sure I got some chills when i was playing at some point.

Poker has been meh this month so far, prob because I am mixing in some 180s and such. However, I feel very poised about my game and can't wait to log a ton of hours this summer.

Ok, so sorry for the retarded post, at least here is a good song to listen to.

-Benjamin

Just Because

2009-05-05T11:29:00.003-05:00

I have had a hard time going to sleep the past few nights. Funny how it's been I haven't worked out much like I have intended to and have been playing a bit more poker. I really really really..really need to stay on schedule as far as lifestyle habits go. I simply don't understand how it is that I can be falling asleep in rehearsal, while watching tv, and when playing poker, when I can't go to bed when my head touches the pillow. Hopefully I'll get in some running today to fix that.

Anyways, I skipped theory this morning. First time to skip a class intentionally, but I knew they weren't taking attendance and we weren't doing any work, just listening to compositions. I did a little bit of cleaning and played some cards. A nice relaxing morning. Today might be a little busy though. I had a 3 hour rehearsal last night and assume I am going to have one tonight as well. In case you haven't kept up, Carmina Burana is coming up and it's going to be amazing. This will most likely be my favorite performance to date, so you should def come if you can. Take a second to listen and you will recognize it.

Other then that, the rest of todays list looks like practicing for a piano quiz tomorrow, and practicing my violin stuff for upper levels. Might try and hang out with some people as well.

Oh yeah, forgot to add to my last post that I learned the rubicks cube the other day. Extremely nerdy but it's fun haha. I think my average is ~3 min right now in completing it. I think it would be sweet to get it down to 1.

My heater cooled off a bit in as far as poker goes. I'm not to worried about it though. I feel fine about everything and that is to be expected. I am going to be a complete volume slut this month. I have already put in like 350 games, thats a great start. A lot of the times why I don't play at night is because the games take so long to load etc. I sort of realized that I don't do anything in that time anyway so why not play some 6/18s right? It's better then nothing imo. So yeah, playing 45s during the day and some 18s at night will help pad the variance and help me get in some extra volume. I'm really excited for the month. School is going to be over, I can hang out with my friends, tons of poker and music.

-Benjamin

Just Lay Me Down

2009-05-03T11:05:00.004-05:00

I finally got around to playing a sesh the other day, first one in 20 days actually which is pretty insane. I hadn't had such a low volume month since September and I wasn't even to serious about poker then. My reasons were good though, I had a lot of school stuff to work on. I was really pleased about my studio recital that I had been practicing a lot for. My professor said that is the best she had heard me play. For some reason my hands didn't get ice cold/sweaty like they normally do. It could have been because I was more prepared but I'm not to sure. Maybe I am just getting over my nervousness problems, that would be nice.

Anyways, I am not to sure what poker goals this month yet because I just don't know how school is going to finish up. I get out about halfway through the month so i'll be able to put in a lot of grinding then. I have epic failed in my past volume goals because of other things getting in the way so I guess if I set something more realistic. Maybe ~1500 games.

Here is my month so far, would be nice if it kept up.... I even moved up to 13th place on the average profit leader boards....

There are like 2 20 game out of the money streaks in there and I am really disappointed at myself afterward because I was getting a little tilted in that time. I think it was a combo not playing in 20 days and some in people or situations were getting a bit frustrating. I pretty much stated in this town instead of going home because I had plans, then those plans get canceled last minute. I guess I won't get into it to much, but I had these plans for a while and my pet peeves are pretty much flaky situations/people not calling back...things like what. Whatever.

Well thought then that, my coach talked about me moving up the 27s this month which is pretty sick. Apparently the play isn't to much better there then at the 12s but it's still a crazy jump. Maybe I can stop mixing the 3/45s though, that would be nice. I calculated my hourly if I just played the 27s and 12s 20 tabling. If I had a 15% roi in the 27s and 22% roi in the 12s that would ~85/hour which is insane. Maybe realistically it would be around 70-75/hour because I know i'll have to mix in some 6s and I might not have 20 tables up at all times. But in any case, that is still pretty gross. I goal is to be making 100/hour by the end of the year, I really don't see that being an issue at all.

You prob don't remember by my last volume prop bet was to play something like 2k games against my friend lawjiks volume. Obv we both epic failed and the deal was for us to both donate $50 to the water project, check out the link on the right that I just added. Here it is as well. http://thewaterproject.org/ He prob forgot all about it so it's going to be funny when I remind him in about 5 minutes ha.

Working out was slow this week because I was so busy with school. I think I only ran once and swam another. One of my friends did a lot of swimming in high school so she taught be a bunch of exercises that made me feel like I had some muscles I had never used. I'll def be swimming for often.

Alrighty, I gota get going so I can have a productive day....

Lead singer is from my hometown I think. I have seen these guys quite a few times and they are amazing.

-Benjamin

Paranoia

2009-04-27T20:40:00.003-05:00

If I had posted this a few hours like I had wanted to I prob would have just whined about everything. I'm not in such a good mood at the moment. However, i'll try and not make this post to bleh as I'm sure no one likes to hear it. But keep in mind, this is my blog and I guess I can spill when I want to. Anyways, on to something halfway useful you music lovers might enjoy.

Always on the Run is a place where you can get free music because the artists offer free downloads. I used to go there to find some new music when I was in the mood and sort of rediscovered/realized this little trick recently. Steps to get it on your itunes...

Go to the site.

Click the red "mp3" tab by the artists name.

When you see the song you like, click save target as.

Copy it to desktop.

Now, go to your Itunes and click add file and find it on your desktop.

Pretty awesome stuff, hope you enjoy and find some useful music.

The Pines concert went extremely well on Saturday I thought. I'm not to sure if I am just getting better or if the music was a bit easier, or a combination of both actually, but I seemed to have a really good handle on all the music and was confident about my playing. I pretty unusual detail that was rather nice was that my mom was my stand partner. The way Orchestra of the Pines works is they take some of the students who audition from the University to play with a bunch of imports/professionals. My mother was one of the imports and I ended up sitting by her. Pretty awesome how that worked out. Other music stuff that is going on is that composition assignment that I was doing last Wednesday. It is going to be played in front of the rest of the theory class tomorrow. Me and my group haven't really gotten together and practiced yet so I hope it comes out ok. It was originally written for violin, cello, and sting bass. But, due to some awesome planning by me, a bass player can't make it so it might be played on electric bass, acoustic bass, or even bassoon. I'll probably get a ton of points taken off but I am really apathetic on how that goes right now. Lets see, other then that, the upper strings studio recital is on Wednesday, which I'm playing for, and should be pretty good. I feel like this will be one of my better performances if I an hold my nerves back. Looking into some beta blockers seems like an option. My nerves really get insane enough to wear my bow starts bouncing when I don't want it to...this is only when I am playing by myself. It's retarded.

I haven't played a sng mtt in like 10 days now. Feels crazy but it's nice to have a break I guess. I just hope it really doesn't throw off my game to much. I'll prob put in some nice review time before I fire up again or have a sesh with one of my coaches to make sure I ease back into it just fine. But yeah aside from that, I have messed around with HU sngs a bit when I have had ~30 min of spare time. I played a ton of the before I got on the staking deal and sort of went away from them. But for now when I don't have 4 hours of time to put in a sesh and want a poker break. They have been doing pretty decent for being away from them for so long.

Obviously this isn't much of a sample space or anything but it really is so easy to tell how bad people are within 3 hands of sitting down with them. Oh you limped the btn 2x in a row? Ty for the money...I think after I get off the staking deal, I might put in a month of hu sngs to see how I fare. I think it is an important skill to have. I really doubt i'll be good enough to make as much as I do at mtt sngs at them but they are still fun none the less.

I think I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that it was my sisters senior recital this past weekend. I had a long drive back last night which explains why I am so tired, most likely leading to my highly irritable mood at the moment. Anyways, she did pretty awesome I though. I hadn't really heard her play in a while so it was def nice to be able to do so. Later, me and my younger sister (still older then me), went back to my older sisters apartment and got to hang and meet some of her friends which was fun. For some reason I was really adamant about not missing my piano class at 8am the next morning. I convinced my parents to leave at around midnight so we could begin the drive back. I had downloaded some episodes of Cash Plays and Deuce Plays to keep me going. I'm a nerd I know. I only had to drive until like 3am though until my dad took over. I slept until about 5:45ish then we got home. I gathered up some things and got back to school like 20 minutes before classes started. That gave me enough time to dump some stuff off by my room and go to class. I don't think my prof remembers me telling him I might miss or anything. I didn't say anything though, +1 for perfect attendance in that class though...

Oh, so I timed my mile on Saturday in between the rehearsal and concert. I just did a half mile warm up then ran a mile more or less as fast as I could. I have never really timed a mile so I wasn't to sure how fast I could start so I wouldn't burnout midway through. It ended up being 7:20 which isn't to bad I guess. I'm making it my summerly goal to get it down to 6:00 minutes flat.

I have been listening to these guys non stop as of late. It might take a listen or two to get acclimated to the style, but it really is worth it. Its not really country, blue grass, or folk it seems. If you listen to an entire album by them, they really seem to do a good job of mixing all of them. The lyrics they write are nothing short of phenom.

It's pretty ridiculous how one person can drive me so insane.

Have a good one,

-Benjamin

Death of a Salesman

2009-04-23T10:38:00.002-05:00

Most of the time I put the vid or song at the end because I think it sort of sums up what I am relating to or thinking about at the time. I'll add it toward the beginning today. Watch it and take something from it.

For those of you who do not know, Death of A Salesman is a book/play written by Aurthur Miller that is set in the late 1940's about a man who realizes he is no longer able to earn a living or pay for his family. I think in pretty short, just do what you love. For those who know me, you know how often I preach that. Hope you enjoy.

So onto other things...

I finished my composition project pretty easily the yesterday, didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. It's extremely scattered brained, which is a pretty good reflection on how I am. I don't have any desire to post it on here at all because its atonal, and I don't really even appreciate that style....its just's easy to write in.

Even though school is coming to a close, I find myself doing a lot of reflection on the past semester and year. Last year I was ecstatic to go home. Not to say that I am not this year, just saying that I actually grown attached to some of the people here. My freshman year I think I was more/less minor depressed when I was at school. I was so social when I was at home but could really care less when I was on campus; and I think it really reflected. Not to say that I am mature beyond my years or anything, but I think a great amount has been done this year. Lately I have been eating a ridiculous amount of healthy things rather then the stereotypical college diet of pizza, burgers, and beer. A combination of that, running, being more responsible about school/music, and hanging with people has put me into an upbeat mood more regularly. As far as my romantic life goes, I haven't really bothered with a serious relationship because I haven't had the time at all really. Latter half of the school year I have become pretty interested in someone though. Whether it works out or not, I don't really know. I haven't really had the desire to date anyone for ~2 years so it's sort of whack having it more/less on my mind even. Sort of weird that I just did a mini summary of the school year, but I guess I just sort of felt like it right now. I might do a bigger one at the end of the semester, just depends.

So some of my summer plans, although not solid yet, is me...

Waking up early and running

Playing at least 100 sngs a day

School

Music

Friends

Probably in that order too. I think I might sign up for a race in mid summer so I can really own the half marathon when it comes. It's not really a question now whether I can win or not, just more of a personal goal I guess. I am thinking about training for a full marathon afterwards but that would be a pretty big commitment, so we'll just see how the half goes first.

I haven't played any poker since the 18th, and sadly I don't think i'll be getting in much more volume until school is out really. I have sick rehearsal for Orch of the Pines tonight, Friday, then the concert on Saturday. Sunday, I am driving out for my sisters senior recital in Abilene which is a good 6 hours away. I'll be pulling an all nighter to make it back that morning in time for school. Monday, I have to get my group together to play my composition that I just wrote for class on Tuesday. Tuesday I have a ridic amount of theory homework due then my studio concert is the next day. After that, I have a concert again that coming weekend. So sick busy this month. I haven't had such a low volume poker month since last September, crazy.

Anyways, going to get going for now so I can grab a smoothie before class. Hope you all have a good one.

-Reasons

Everything Hits At Once

2009-04-20T09:15:00.006-05:00

I think I officially have one month left of my second year in College. Pretty sick that it's so close because looking back, everything goes so fast. But whatever, it always feels that way. I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to do before I am free for the summer though. I sort of forgot about having an Orchestra of the Pines concert this weekend. It should be sweet though, we are playing Brahms Symphony No.2 which is going to be pretty cool. My University/School hired my mom as an import so it's always fun to be able to play with her in an orchestral setting.

Other then that, I have a my composition project due this week(Thursday) and I don't even have 10% of it done. I know once I focus on it a lot of stuff will come to me. It's writing the paper analyzing it that I am not really looking forward to. Our studio recital is also about a week from Wednesday and I actually feel somewhat prepared. My lesson on Friday went really well and my teacher said she could tell I actually practiced, always a good feeling.

Anyways, not to dilute that post with school work or anything, despite my horrific volume this month (because of school), I have been running extremely good and playing pretty well in my opinion.

I have been doing a lot of studying in the 45s before and during my run goods. I think that is really important to do rather then only studying when one is running bad. I need to sit down some time and figure out how to make my hot key usage more efficient though. 20 tables is going fine and I feel I have enough time to make the correct decisions so I feel if I can fine a few new tools to decrease dead time/mouse movement then I should be able to up to 24 pretty easy. I am pretty stoked to be out of school so I can get my playing onto a reg schedule.

As far as running goes in the most textbook sense, that has been going good as well. I can probably run ~5 miles now if I try and max out my distance. I haven't really done that in a while because when I run I mix in some sprinting and back pedaling so i'll see about that sometime soon. I maybe right before school gets out i'll see what my max is so I can get on a steady pace to get to my half marathon by September. Running every day and eating at normal times has helped a lot. I actually found it surprising the other day when I was actually hungry around noon time. I got off a little bit on Saturday when I decided to play and didn't each much of anything normal. My daily food consisted of yogurt, fig newtons, powerade, and triscuts. It def could have been worse as far as degen poker playing goes so you really can't hate on that.

Would like to spill more but I have school to tend to. Hope you all have a good one,

-Benjamin

Fluorescent Adolescent

2009-04-15T14:47:00.003-05:00

This month at the 45s has been awesome, I'm busting them up pretty hard. I feel pretty hesitant to say that because I know poker can be insane and could turn on me anytime if feels. In my defense though, I have been studying them quite a bit and reviewing/sweating, discussing them as much as I can with fellow players. It's nice to see results of hard work because that isn't always the case in this game. I have only played a small 18 mans sesh in which I 20 tabled those as well. I'm just running sick good...

Other then poker, this week is going pretty good, I have fit in a lot of practice time on the violin and my solo is sounding someone decent I think. I got out of playing for studio class this week...again. Not really sure how that worked out but I had my violin out ready to play first and get it over with but I put it up to see if I could squeeze by again and I did. Prob for the better because it will keep me practicing hard so I don't blow it come recital time. Recital is in two weeks by the way. I got my paper back that I started on midnight of in Music History and Lit the other day. I got a C, just what I expected. The comment on it pretty much followed this.

"Ben, you are a brilliant kid and brought up some really good points, you just need to focus more on the small things".

I guess thats what I get for not proof reading...I have a test in that same class over the Romantic period. I have a bet on this test with a fellow classmate pretty much getting 5-1. He has made an A on every test and I have yet to make one. But yeah, the deal is if I beat him in grades he owes me IHOP, if he beats me I owe him a monster. I think I had hope until he got board on break and told me he studied for like 4 hours lol. Whatever.

I decided from here on out I'm going to be running everyday. There really is no downside in doing this. I have such a hard time going to bed it seems like the best option, espesh since I have that half marathon that is going to be here before I realize it. I am also setting my bedtime at ~1:30 every night. That should get me close to 6 hours of sleep every night which is a pretty big improvement.

I did some discussing with a friend yesterday as I have been pretty mood swingy as of late. Not like angry or anything, just a little up and down. Basis of the question was that "Can you think of a great artist that you really respect or got anything out of that wasn't severely messed up"? Doesn't matter what kind of artist really, painter, musician, whatever. But yeah, I am as happy as can be right now with everything so not to much to worry about. I could sort of elaborate but I am going running right now. Have a good one.

-Reasons

Lay down in the green grass

2009-04-12T23:43:00.006-05:00

The massive break I had/still am in was awesome. I felt I got a lot done, something that normally doesn't happen on breaks.

Friday night some of my friends called to get me to come play some live poker. I normally like to avoid situations as this because I really just can't stand live poker as of late. People just get so annoying in live poker because they feel the need to share their retarded strategies and such. Only reason to play is to just mess around with friends etc. With that being said, despite me purposely playing spewing a few spots, I managed to come up a buy in (nl50) at the end of the night. I also played my first live Omaha sesh. It really wasn't much a sesh really. Four people donking around is more like what it was. Other then a few times I have played cash online and a some HU sngs, I haven't had much experience. The game is really fascinating to me and I can def see myself getting into it later down the road...maybe at the end of this year. I guess one thing that playing live did make me realize though is that I am thankful I am good at online so I don't have to play live. Going to bed at 5am after grinding some low stakes cash just isn't really satisfying. Waking up lethargic makes it had to have a good productive day. Though, I managed.

Saturday I really didn't get going until 2pm ish. One of my friends called and woke up me at around 11 to tell me random stuff. I sort of stumbled out and in to bed just so I could lay there for a few more hours and listen to Sigur Ros. After I eat some breakfast, I actually practice my violin for an hour or two. My Mom worked with me on it and played the piano accompaniment for it. I'm going to have to play it on Wednesday and I haven't practiced with a piano yet, so that was nice. After an ongoing frustration with my current laptop, I go to best buy after practicing and buy a lap top. I didn't have anything in mind but walked out with something rather nice...

It's an Asus, apparently they make a bunch of high end stuff for gamers. Here are some of th specs.

4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 memory

320GB SATA hard drive (7200 rpm)

NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GS graphics

15 inch screen

One of the things that I am happiest about is that I found a good laptop with a keypad. I didn't really want to get one without one of those. I spent about 1000$ on it as well. That was pretty much the price I was going for too.

Well, before I got to mess with it or anything like that. Some of friends and I went to go see Adventure Land. I hadn't ever heard of it or anything but I guess it was supposed to be be funny. Not really going to spoil it if any of you are going to see it but I asked some of my friends what they thought afterwards and they said it was OK. They said they felt that way sort of because they were expecting it to be a bit funnier. I really freekin loved it for some reason. I thought it had a ton of awkward adolescent upper teen to mid 20ish humor that I really enjoyed. If you really aren't to huge of a movie critic then you should go see it.

Today, after I went to church con mi familia and took a nap, I put in a session on my new laptop. Ship the run goods imo.

20 tabling is going really smooth and I feel that I am making a lot of good adjustments in the 45s that I need to be making. I hope the rest of the month continues like it is already...would be nice to get out of makeup. Other then playing and reviewing some hh's for a student, I didn't do to much today. I think I might even play more whenever I am done writing this.

Tomorrow I am going to try make it a structured one to get stuff done and get back at around 9ish. That should give me enough time to get up, pack, hang out with friends then go back to school. This break has been nice but I wouldn't mind getting back to school to see some people.

Come closer don't be shy
Stand beneath a rainy sky
The moon is over the rise
Think of me as a train goes by

-Ben