There's more to life than poker

My son has started off his senior wrestling season on a high note! He's now 5-0 and wrestling very well. It's nice to see that he really "gets it" that this is his last competitive season and is wrestling every match as if it's his last. Which, unfortunately, actually happened to another of our seniors last night when he dislocated his knee during a match.

My son is the one in orange :-)

Painful truth update:

2005 on line totals:
April 30, -- $179
May 30, -- $375
June 30 -- $610
July 30 -- $1197
August 30 -- $1227
September 30-- $1337
October 30 -- $1514
November 30 -- $1615

November is drawing to a close and wrestling season is in full swing so I have very little time to play for REAL money. One thing I learned the hard way is to NEVER play poker for real money (real money being defined as anything over a buck) when pressed for time.

I repeat..... never play poker for real money when pressed for time.

Sometimes you sit down at a table and get cold decked for 45 minutes or more and then catch second best a couple of times and suddenly you're down nearly $100 and are running out of time to play. The best thing to do when you are playing well but stuck in a game is to simply keep playng well.

The cards will come.

It's not the Gods of Poker who tell us that the cards will come, it's math. If you keep playing well, mathmatically you HAVE to eventually receive cards.

So I've spent very little time playing for real money but I did clear a small bonus (while NOT catching cards) which made up for the losses that would have come otherwise and finished in the money in several $1 + $.10 sit-and-goes on UltimateBet.

I'm really fond of the $1 super-duper-ultra-fast SNG's because the blinds go up every 2 minutes and people bust out right and left. Well worth the $1 investment for a half hour of fun before turning in.

There is one game that I jump into for "almost real" money on UB and that's the $.10/$.25 Omaha 8/b limit game. I like it because I only play top hi/lo hands and I usually make a few big bets. Additionally I make UB points and UB recently offered a 25% bonus up to $100 and so I moved some money from Netteller to UB to take advantage of the bonus. It moves out VERY slowly at the level I'm playing, but an extra big bet every half hour is one more than I had.

Thanks for reading.

Look Ma! I'm a super hero!

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Iron Man 75% The Flash 70% Green Lantern 70% Catwoman 70% Superman 55% Robin 55% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 40% Hulk 30% Batman 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility. http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/superhero/pics/spidy.gif">

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When reality bites you.

Poker playing has taken a backseat to life in the past few weeks.

I didn’t even get a chance to update my finish in the PokerStars bloggers tournament. I finished in the top 200 and was up over $11,000 tc at one point before going card dead and eventually getting outdrawn with AJ to KQ. I got all my money in as the favorite however so I can’t complain. I think I played well but should have been a little more aggressive at least twice.

I’ve played a few times on Party with my usual boring in-it-to-make-money style and have currently posted seven winning sessions in a row, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The reality of my son’s upcoming graduation from high school set in recently.

I’ve been working part-time for a relatively young science textbook company called CPO Science, which has top-notch science texts. The unique thing about this company, and the niche they are carving for themselves in the science textbook market, is that when you purchase their texts they give you fantastic lab equipment at no additional charge.

The company was started by an MIT graduate and will undoubtedly be a big player in educational materials in the future.

The company flew me to Palm Springs to demonstrate their equipment at an enormous science conference and I had a chance to meet some of the company big wigs. I guess they like me because I just received a call from one of the company’s Vice Presidents with a fulltime job offer.

Until a few weeks ago I had never even thought about leaving education. My life’s focus has been raising my son, making sure he has been provided for, and ensuring there was money put away for college, trade school, etc.

Obviously any job outside of education will pay more than being a teacher, but it’s nothing I can consider right now. TJ is a senior, we’ve just started wrestling practice, I’m one of the coaches, and I wouldn’t miss one minute of my son’s senior year for all the cows in Brazil, which are apparently quite delicious because the company has invited me to a dinner tonight at a Brazilian steakhouse :-)

So real life is taking time away from the tables, but to me it’s a lot more important to have a balanced life than to make a few bucks playing poker.