Busy

The month of August turned out to be a pretty busy one filled with a week at the strip, moving, taking on students, and of course playing poker.

Beginning of the month was a ton of fun. A couple of friends from my hometown came to Las Vegas for a week, and I took off playing poker and stayed at the Bellagio with them. It was their first time out here, so we pretty much went everywhere and did everything you could possibly do. It was great to relax for a week and enjoy Vegas, and not have to sit in front of my computer all day. I actually ended up winning some money throwing dice too so that always adds to the fun as well.

Around the end of the month, the majority of my roommates began heading back to their homes, and our once packed mansion turned into an empty house. Since there were only a few of us left, I decided get an apartment with YX32mike and Jpeazy713. It was a pain in the ass to move all of our stuff from our house to the new apartment but it's finally done and everything's set up.

I've had numerous friends ask me to teach them how to play online poker recently, and I decided I would experiment with two of them and see how it goes. I currently have them playing the $3 90 man KOs on Full Tilt Poker. It's amazing to look over their hand histories from a few weeks ago and where they are now. They are improving rapidly, and I can easily see them crushing the game and moving up in stakes in the near future.Teaching also helps me review my own play and stay sharp. It's easy to start slipping up in your own game and constant review will prevent that from occurring.

As for my own poker game, August went pretty well. I played a bunch of 180s, MTTs, and a few other variations of SNGs. I've now been playing poker full time for about 3 months and unbelievably I'm still not burnt out yet. I think the reason I love to play poker so much is because I am a very competitive individual. I've always loved to compete and play sports. Growing up I hated to lose at anything (I still hate to lose at anything.) Playing sports back then was different then it is now. When I played competitive sports in school, everyone gave it everything they had. Recently I've played in a few adult basketball leagues. In these leagues it's like no one is really trying. Winning doesn't feel as good and losing doesn't hurt as much. Which brings me to poker. Poker is the only game I can play now that still gives me a rush when I win, and on the downside it isn't very enjoyable to lose. As long as I continue to have fun playing cards, I do not see myself stopping any time soon.

Snowman

 Ben, Christine, and I on the strip earlier this month.

 My new office at the apartment.

Nick's Main Event finish, End of July prop bet, MTT success, and August Goals

The World Series of Poker held its Main Event at the beginning of the month. The buy in for this tournament was $10,000 and 7,000 people entered. Three of my roommates played in it this year and it was fun going down to the Rio to watch everyone play. Two of them got KO'd second day but Nick managed to hang in there and had a top chip stack for a few days. He ended up going out in 107th place for a prize of around $50,000. He even made it to the feature table and was called back to be interviewed by ESPN so look for him on tv in the upcoming weeks.
Did not play nearly as many games as I wanted to this month online. I did play a few cash games at The Wynn and a tournament at Caesars. (my friend James came in 3rd in the tournament at Caesars his first night here.) Since everyone in the house had been slacking on games this month we had a house bet the last week of July for most profit in the 180 mans. It was a close bet for most of the week and I had a chance to win coming down to my last two tables but unfortunately the cards did not fall in my favor. Michael Chang ended up winning so congrats to him on a job well done.

I started playing in the $27 nightly turbo tournament on Pokerstars last week. I finished top 20 one of my first times and knew this tournament could be beat. On Thursday it had 993 entrants and I managed to finish 2nd. REALLY frustrating to go that far and lose but 2nd place was worth $3,314 so it wasn't that bad.(It's too bad this was unable to count in the prop bet because it would have brought me up to almost $5k for the week in profit.) I plan on taking more shots at turbo structured MTTs such as this one in the future, because they play like the 180 man tournaments I am used to and the payouts are much greater.
In August I hope to put in a ton of volume and see my best results yet. I really feel I can crush this game if I am focused and put in the effort. I am going to try and play 100 tournaments a day Sunday-Friday and have my most profitable month so far. I'll update mid to end of August to recap how I'm doing.
Snowman

Quick Update

Been really busy and don't really have time or feeling spending anymore time on my computer for a long update but things are going great and I love it out here! Been playing and studying lots of poker and have had the opportunity to meet several very famous poker players and visit some of the casinos on the strip. Most of the older players have left and now its just a bunch of kids my age playing in the house. I'll try and post a longer update later this week with stats and some more pics but unitl then I'll leave you with a pic of my favorite poker player, Phil Ivey, and me. (If for some reason you do not know who Phil Ivey is and you are reading this blog turn on ESPN when they are airing one of the poker shows for 15 mins and you will see him)

First Week

Hello everyone,
My first week here has been an exciting and interesting, and I really don't know where to start with this post. I guess I'll start by walking you through my week. I got here late Monday night and went straight to bed. I woke up the next morning and had a pretty good first day at the tables. After playing all day Aaron and Daniel took us out to dinner at a really nice Italian restaurant. The next few days were not the prettiest days I've had playing poker and I went on a little downswing. I went over some of my hand histories with Nick, Mi_turtle, and he was able to point out a few minor leaks I was making and after adjusting those I was able to finish the week strong.
I love the setup we have here. Everyone is spread out throughout downstairs and has their own computer with two flat screen monitors. We also have our own chef who cooks and brings us food so we do not have to leave our games to eat. On Friday Nick bought a hoop for the garage so I like to be able to relax and play basketball between games and on breaks.
On Sunday, Ebecks18, won a main event package worth $12,000 with his FPPS, so to celebrate we went out to Red Rocks casino. It was his last night here, and I'm glad he won because he was a very nice kid.
That's about all I can think of right now so I'll end this with my stats and some pics from the first week.

1987snowman

First Post

Hello everyone,
I'm currently in the Atlanta airport waiting to catch my plane to Vegas and figured since I had time to kill I might as well start up my blog. I'd like to start off by thanking you for checking out my blog. Whether you are a poker player, family member, or friend this blog should be entertaining and hopefully not incredibly boring. This is my first blogging post so I figured I'd tell everyone about myself for those of you who know nothing about me and explain why I'm catching a plane out to Las Vegas.
I am a 22 year old male from Virginia. I currently live in Richmond and have lived here basically my whole life. I have been playing poker for about 6 years now and for the last 4 years mainly online. I was basically a losing/break even player with a few big tournament cashes before this past year. I began to follow poker blogs, read over the 2+2 forums, and periodically checking the sharkscope leader boards. A name I came across alot was Nick "Mi_turtle" Rainey. I saw in his blog that he was going to be taking on students and staking them. I immediately emailed him a bio of myself and my poker experience and luckily he replied back and took me under his wing. Starting in January he had me grinding the $2 180 mans on Pokerstars. I grinded these out for a few months with some success and a lot of variance. In mid March Nick asked me if I would like to join his Elite Team. I gladly accepted and have been grinding the $12 180 mans since. As part of the Elite Team I was able to recieve coaching from Nick as well as Johhnyhildo and Bodeye. Another perk of being on the Elite Team is being able to fly out to Las Vegas and receive live training. Since I am still in College and do not have classes till September, I have decided to go live with Nick, Bodeye, Johhnyhildo, and some of the other Elite Team members for little while this summer.
I have never had a blog before but I feel like I may not be the best at updating it regularly, but my goal is to update this blog once a week with pictures, graphs of my results, what my day to day life is like, etc.


Thanks for reading my blog and GL at the tables to everyone


1987Snowman

*Pretty boring first post so I thought I'd include a link to where I'll be living in Las Vegas in an effort to keep people around for my 2nd post.....
http://zapslist.com/Yucca/index.html