I got my mojo back, baby! Yea!

It looks like my quasi-blog post on pocketfives.com (shameless plug) was well-received so I started up my own blog thingamagig. Apparently reading about how I do nothing all day is interesting to people. Go figure. Since I haven’t written since Thursday I’ll give a rundown of each day. It’ll probably end up being a bit lengthy but whatever, this is my blog beetches!

On Friday my brother and I ventured to Tampa for the Styx-Foreigner-Def Leopard concert and to party with one of our friends for a going-away bash. On the way there we hit this massive thunderstorm. The lightning was so sick. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. At one point I looked around to see if I could see any sunlight or blue sky anywhere and I couldn’t. For anyone who’s never been to Florida, it’s extremely wide open and you can see what the weather is like a good distance away. Here’s a fun fact about Florida. The highest point in the entire state is a remarkably low 345 ft. There isn’t anything remotely close to a mountain, just hills and barely that. So during the thunderstorm there was also conveniently a tremendous amount of traffic. It took 45 minutes for us to go a half a mile at one point. We were traveling so slow that my brother took out his laptop and put on an episode of Scrubs. And man, what a simply fabulous show. Zack Braff’s mannerisms are just priceless and the middle-aged doctor whose name I do not know is so blunt, it’s actually refreshing. Anyone who watches the show knows who I’m talking about and if you don’t know about the show, well, you should get in the know. Two and a half hours later we reached downtown Tampa and headed to the concert.

Once we finally got inside, Styx had already finished their set. UGHHHHH!!! The reason why I was going to see the concert was for Styx, not Foreigner or Def Leopard. Granted those bands are good as well, but they are just so standard for 80’s rock. Styx however is really underrated and versatile. They have sappy songs like Come Sail Away that you really can get into and do some major fist-pumping. Then they can also be this outlandish, quirky band with Mr. Roboto and then just totally ROCK OUT with a song like Renegade. Now why couldn’t they have Def Leopard or Foreigner first? All Def Leopard has is one great song about freaking sugar and a one-armed drummer, which is actually pretty sick but nonetheless, why was the headliner not Styx? Styx has seniority anyways.

There were a few brief moments of enjoyment though. Like when this one girl started talking to me and asked what I was doing later. There was really no shot I was going to follow up on anything past this conversation because she definitely wasn’t my type but when a decent looking girl comes up to me, it’s still somewhat flattering. Then she asked me for coke and that’s when I realized what she really wanted. But in my head it was me she wanted, not the coke and I’m sticking to that. Oh and by the way, no I don’t do coke.

The other awesome moment of the concert was towards the end of the show when this guy next to us just started vomiting everywhere. He vomited, then stopped, then vomited some more, then started chanted “USA! USA! USA!” at the top of his lungs. Totally random but hilarious. Of course, throwing up is absolutely gross but at the same time I find it amusing to watch the stream of whatever fluid comes out. We’ve all been there so we gotta laugh at someone else’s harmless misfortune. It’s like in high school when a kid is strolling down the hallways and then all of a sudden some other kid comes by and unzips his backpack so all of his books fall out. It’s always funny and it always sucks when it happens to you.

After the concert we went to see Superbad. That movie was probably one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long long time, maybe ever. The jokes were just so lame and the plot so generic. Like seriously Mclovin? What a ridiculous name. I loved Knocked Up and 40-Year Old Virgin and in general I love all of Judd Apatow’s movies, but Superbad, was well, for lack of a better term, SUPERBAD. Yea, so Friday night sucked donkey balls.

On Saturday I was able to squeeze in a day session but it was doomed from the start. I was out in 30 minutes from the Poker Stars 300 and lost my first seven sit-n-gos. Three hours into the session I was tilted up pretty badly and just not playing good at all. Looking back, a big reason for playing badly was just being out of my element. I sat on an uncomfortable couch with my laptop on my actual lap. Normally it’s sitting on my beautiful desk that was built by none other than the legendary Speedy McDesk Guy and I’m sitting in a big leather desk chair. Small things like this in my opinion are crucial for ultimate online poker success as well as having a desktop and a laptop. I like playing on my laptop but sometimes it can be a burden playing on such a small computer. With a desktop I can sit back in my chair completely relaxed and make decisions more lucidly. I know this is pretty ridiculous that I’m going through the ins and outs of an optimal poker setup but I think it’s just as important as the poker itself. Well maybe not that important, but close. It’s about as important as showering before your poker session.

After all was said and done I ended up about 4k down on the day but I was very much off my game and when you keep doing stupid shit on the bubble of sit-n-gos it will definitely add up. My mind wasn’t in the right place. I wanted to play sit-n-gos but had to play all the Saturday tourneys. So what ended up happening was I played too many tourneys and too many sit-n-gos at once and never got into a groove. Although sit-n-gos can be pretty mind-numbing and robotic at times, there is a lot more thinking going on when it gets shorthanded and sometimes you just need to take a second, slow things down, and think about the situation. At my low point of the day I was down about 8k. Then I got a hold of myself and started focusing primarily on sit-n-gos. By the end of the day I had halved my deficit and wasn’t happy about it but okay with it.

Generally after I finish my sessions I need to just chill out and take a break. Play some FIFA, smoke the occasional blunt, or just watch some good ole-fashioned TV on my 55 incher. But on Saturday I had to be dressed and ready to go right after my session finished. My friends got a V.I.P. table at one of the hottest clubs in Tampa and we were celebrating my friend, Brian’s departure into the Real World. I actually hadn’t done the whole bottle service/V.I.P. thing since my last time in Vegas. And I barely remember that last time in Vegas but that’s another story. But this is my blog so why not give you a brief rundown of the story. It's a good time for a tangent anyways.

Basically I didn't eat anything before I went to Tangerine, a club in Vegas, drank too much and passed out inside of the club. The bouncers kicked me out along with my friend Sean and then I got lost in the casino for 30 minutes before Sean finally found me. Once we got back to where we were staying, the Bellagio, security guards tried to escort me to my room but since I was passed out, they had to put me in a wheel chair and Kart me up to my room. Pretty much just another normal night in Vegas...

Anyways, the partying done at the club was sick but when you’re in V.I.P. with bottles is it ever not? I didn't find any ladies but I wasn't really trying either. However, our rocket scientist friend did find a lovely lady to take home so the night wasn't a failure for all of us :).

The next day I drove back to Orlando and got ready for a hardcore Sunday session. I was truly focused the entire day and grinded the fuck out of every tournament. I had made a conscious decision to just go back to my basics. If my game is on, I’m really good at finding good spots and just being extremely patient. I can grind a shortstack out for a long long time until I slowly gain some momentum. I did this in so many tournies on Sunday, it was sick. I got 17^th and 18^th in the 2 100rebuys. Although that was disappointing I still got 2k each which adds up. I final tabled the 200rebuy for 5k and got 4^th in the Full Tilt 150 for 6.5k. All in all it was a very good day where I strung together solid cashes without any major wins. Sometimes that’s how Sundays go and I’m cool with that. When I break even on Sunday I consider it a good day. I also went deep in the Sunday Million where I literally blinded myself out but I wasn’t even mad about it. I had a stack for a good amount of time and then lost a few pots and told myself to be patient and wait for the cards to come because of the longer levels and great structre . So I waited, and waited, and waited but they never came. I did get AJo once utg where I open raised for the 2^nd time in 3 hours at the table only to get reraised and I was forced to lay that down. It was just remarkable how I saw so many hands and so few above average hands. AJo was by far the best hand I saw at the table. At one point I was reduced to reshoving with J3o just because I knew I could use my image a little. So that was my Sunday. I was very happy to start winning again and get my mojo back. As the great Bryn Kenney says “All it takes is confidence.”

This whole blog thing is new to me and I have to get a feel for what people want to hear and what people don’t. Also, there wasn’t too much exciting that went on over the weekend. Give me some feedback on what you want me to write about or talk about or sing about, whatever. If you want me to dedicate an entire blog entry to Entourage, I’d be more than happy to do that. Actually, I might do that anyways. It deserves it’s own blog. Or if you want me to talk more poker, I could talk about a lot of things that piss me off. Like that guy who just won twelve coinflips in a row and then he has AK up against deuces and you hear him say “Cmon baby, ONE TIME!”. Like seriously guy? You gotta be fucking kidding me. People like that make me rage inside. Or do you want me to rate the funniest movies of all time? All of these can be and probably will be future blog entires. I’ll get better at it as it goes along. But for now peeeeace.

P.S. And oh yea, if you made it this far, all that shit I said about Superbad was superfalse. You suckas got punk’d! Obviously Superbad was like the best movie ever ever ever!