First, apologies to my loyal readers (both of you) for not updating this thing since April.  Now, likely because I’m taking a law school exam in 12 hours and thus feel the need to distract (or sabotage) myself, I’m compelled to share some thoughts with the world.  It’s been a pretty interesting seven-or-so months since then, to say the least.  Let’s see, I…

• Didn’t fail or drop out of law school after two semesters.
• Helped defend people’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights with the wonderful folks at the ACLU of Nevada.
• Lived with a great group of friends in the best Vegas poker house yet.
• Developed a slightly-greater-than-cursory interest in watching (obviously not participating in) MMA.
• Played three live donkaments.
• Won one of them.
• Lost ~$26k in about 209k hands of online cash.
• Won ~$10k in about 209 hands of live cash.
• Went through the motions of interviewing for 2010 summer jobs with big law firms.
• Failed to land such a summer job for 2010, perhaps due to being an awkward, inarticulate interviewee (for proof of this, you need only type my name into YouTube).
• Enjoyed most of the third semester of law school (exams pending…c’mon B-minus average!).
• Read at least one novel.
• Watched several dozen movies.
• Listened to 50 Cent’s “I Get Money” a few hundred times.
• Had needles jammed into my upper back on two occasions.
• Whined uncountably many times (insert diagonalization joke for Derk) to JCarver about poker despite being up way more on the year than I anticipated or deserved.  If there were justice in poker, one could posit that his most recent heater is a karmic reward for patiently absorbing all those whines without once threatening to beat the shit out of me.  You’re welcome, buddy!

I suppose I’ve done other stuff too; perhaps that stuff will merit mention in future blog posts.  And yes, there will be future blog posts, once I get the proper motivation to write ‘em up.  I guess I’ve always been a pretty private perfectionist, which obviously hampers my blogging abilities.  After all, if I’m unwilling to share my innermost thoughts with the world, and unwilling to churn out posts that consist merely of uninteresting poker whines and brags,  then obviously this blog’s output will suffer.  But for the love of money, I’ll shower you all in blog posts.  Until then, I’ll do my normal cop-out and list things I plan to write about.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get around to doing so this time.

So, dear reader(s), what would you like me to write about next?  The 10k WSOP Heads-up tournament (what little I can recall of it; I was very “in the moment” throughout much of that tournament, which I guess contributed to my success)?  Breaking even over 350k hands of internet cash games?  Books?  Movies (I’m definitely going to write about District 9 at some point, which, despite its flaws, is one of the better films I can recall seeing in recent memory)?  Law school and the law generally?  Politics?  Salacious details of my personal life?

I guess this is a call for some input in the comments.  I see those comments as proof that people actually read this; while it might be a nice personal exercise to write out my thoughts once in a while, it seems a bit pointless to do it on the internet if there’s no audience out there.  I hope at least some of you are interested in the fucked up things that bounce around my dome.  If you are, let me hear it, fuckers!  If you’re not, well, that’s just like, your opinion, man.

BAD BRACELET CREW, WHAT IT DEW!

http://www.pokernews.com/wsop/2009/event-29/

There was a chop, and the two played for $100k and the bracelet.

I played a little poker early on this month.  Got tantalizingly close to big scores in a bunch of MTTs (a couple final 2 tables in the stars 100r, final 3 tables in the sunday brawl, final 2 tables in the ftp sunday 150r, getting fairly deep in a couple SCOOP events) but didn’t really make much money.  I felt like I was playing very good tournament poker, but just never really hitting the right level of aggression to suit my later tables (thus either spazzing off chips or bleeding off chips), and not picking up hands or running successful resteals late in the game.  That isn’t to say I ran bad; I probably sucked out huge for my tournament life 3 or 4 times in the brawl.  So, I can’t really complain.  I also played some cash and started out red hot, but then hit a wall of runbad and playbad, especially at 3/6.  Overall, I probably made around $3k this month.  Meh.  Thus, I’m going to make like my favorite chef and SHUT IT DOWN pokerwise for the rest of the month.

Besides feeling like I’m not playing well, this semester’s law school exams are fast approaching (first one in less than 3 weeks), and I feel much less prepared than I did last semester.  I kept putting off extra studying over and over again, simply keeping up with the reading for each class.  But reading alone probably won’t be enough to beat the curve.  So, from here on out I’m going to have to channel the effort that allowed me to grind 88k 6m hands in April into studying Property, Constitutional Law, Immigration Law, and IP Law.  I can probably put in 7-8 hours a day on this grind, just sitting in the library trying to avoid distractions while I study the materials, read hornbooks, and make outlines.  Sure it won’t be as fun as poker, but I’m kind of glad I have to do it, if only because it will prevent burnout and make me appreciate poker even more when May (and FTOPS) rolls around.

Of course, in order to do this I need to give myself a ridiculous over-the-top challenge.  Last month, it was getting top 10 in a rake race.  This month, I think it’ll be getting four good outlines done, and making good flowcharts for every class except Con Law by the 26th, and reading all the relevant parts of a certain 1200 page Con Law hornbook by the time I take that exam.  This will require one hell of a grind, no doubt.  But hopefully doing all that cramming will allow me to stay above the median.   Anyone wanna bet on it? 

Because I wouldn’t dream of letting Jason and his, you know, massive success get all of the badbeatscrew.com readership, I feel compelled to post.

When March started, I was playing 1/2 and often had my entire FTP roll of about 3k spread across 12 tables.  At some point during this month of playing about 85k hands of NLHE 6m cash, I peaked at around $40k in my FTP account, playing 5/10 with a “standard” 30-40 buyin bankroll.  Winning 5-figs on the month and getting halfway unstuck for the year, grinding my ass off to bring my bankroll back from the brink of bustitude, is actually admirable and something to be proud of.  I guess.

But this wouldn’t be a Leo blog post without a heavy dose of vitamin W.  No, I don’t mean , which I’m sure this post will get when I stop writing this at school and go home.  I mean whining, obviously.  Why the whining?  Because I happened to end the month on about a $10k downswing.  I guess it was natural that I regressed to the mean, given that I ran extremely good for most of the month, but it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth to end the month on such a bad note.  And, of course, I managed to get tantalizingly deep in a Sunday tournament with a huge stack, only to blast it off making a (likely) +EV, (definitely) high-variance 4bet shove that happened to run into AK.  So, given the myriad feelings of mostly-unjustified disappointment I have going into the end of this month, here is a list of things I’ll look to improve whenever I play next (I can’t really put in much time in April, due to the specter of law school exams hovering over me):

1.  Find a happy medium between spewmonster and nitbag in tournaments.  Jason does this extremely well.  Perhaps I’ll just watch all his PokerVT videos or something.

2.  Become less results-oriented, especially with tournaments.  Specifically, I need to stop feeling awful after I bust in a tournament when I get the money in bad (in a non-cooler spot).  Attempts to avoid this feeling certainly prevented me from spewing before, but it also made me pass up a bunch of spots in which I could accumulate chips.  Before this month, when I would get deepish in tournaments with a short stack (as it seems like I always did) and then lose a flip or whatever, I wouldn’t get that terrible feeling; I could just chalk up the loss to MTT variance.  But now, when I get deep in a tournament with a huge stack, like I had in the 2nd Chance Yesterday, and I go nuts 3-betting and 4-betting and accumulating like all those online MTT pros whose games I admire, and then I run into a real hand to bust, I just get so down on myself for spewing (even though busting from bleeding away chips slowly is still busting).  My brain switches into full-on self-hate mode, like, “you’re such a fucking moron for taking this moderatly +EV spot and risking all your chips when you could probably avoid blasting the fuck off and still find ways to accumulate by stealing from nits or actually picking up a hand how can you be so fucking stupid etc.”  I should probably stop that somehow.

3.  While I’ve found that I don’t suck that badly at 12-tabling on my 30″ monitor, there are certainly times when my game just turns into “automated button pushing.”  I can get away with this in tournaments, I guess, because I have to be tighter in full ring games anyway, and the generally smaller stacks lend themselves to more standard opening/shoving ranges, etc.  But when I get into that kind of rut against the regs in 6max games, they’ll pick up on it and start outplaying me badly.  This might be a form of tilt, but I gotta stop playing when it hits.

4.  Win more money without showdown (in cash as well as tournaments).  I don’t know if this just a stylistic thing, in that my cash game style (which has seemed to work well this month) is centered more around the hero call and getting value from people than getting people to make sick laydowns, or if it is indicative of overall bad play.  That red line on my PT3 graph has a disgusting downward trend that is difficult to ignore.  When I’m playing well, playing creatively, that downward trend levels out.  When I turn into an automaton who just presses buttons, that line falls off a god damn cliff (this shows that the Leotomaton is more inclined to just call/call and build big pots before giving up the hand like a bitch).  I vaguely recall, when this whole perma-downswing was at its worst, I had a pretty good red line.  OF course, I was playing a lot more HU then, so that probably has a decent amount to do with it.  Meh.

5.  I am still a dreadful PLO player.  Maybe I’ll watch some videos on it, but playing that shit in class (or, ever, really) is just burning money, even if it gets me those ftp points for iron man or whatever.  So, no more of that for me.

Anyway, I guess March isn’t over yet, and I’ll probably play donkaments and cash tonight, just to see if i can finish the month on a good note (and get that precious Iron Man status, obviously).  Hopefully, after tonight, I’ll be able to post the March graph and still say “at least you’re not stuck as bad as you were in February!”

I do, apparently.  Overall, I was unimpressed with this movie.  The things it did well (the concept of some dude essentially becoming a god, some of the less-contrived elements of the storyline, the alternative history complete with Tricky Dick, the looming threat of nuclear war, and ironic nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” of the Cold War) were entertaining and interesting in the movie, but are probably excellent in the graphic novel.  However, there was a ton of stuff that, while probably passable in the graphic novel format, became either laughable, groan-worthy, or evoked a massively incredulous from me.

For instance, the dialogue and narration was just brutal on the ears.  Seeing the words “like an abattoir of retarded children” on a printed page might evoke a smile.  Maybe it’s supposed to be ironically over-the-top, as some sort of commentary on the ludicrous dialogue of the superhero genre?  Whereas a traditional masked vigilante might use some overblown analogy to cockroaches or rats to describe the scum of his city, Rorschach has to take it to some newer, subtle-as-a-cinderblock level?  It certainly doesn’t work hearing that shit aloud, in Jackie Earle Haley’s gravelly, trying-too-hard-to-be-hard-boiled voice.  It doesn’t come across as gritty, it comes across as phony.

I’m trying to think of other snippets of dialogue that were as laughably bad as this, but I’m drawing blanks on specifics.  I would pillory the acting, but I doubt I’m knowledgeable enough about cinema to break down what exactly I found so objectionable about it.  Suffice it to say, many of the actors were stiffs, who just kind of spout cheesy lines and get into CGI-fights that more resemble a video game than a motion picture that’s supposed to be taken seriously.

Speaking of which, almost all the fights in this movie are something that translate poorly from a comic to the big screen.  In writing this, I’m thinking specifically of the scene where that Batman-ripoff owl dude and whatever that masked chick’s name was break into the prison mid-riot to spring Rorschach but my analysis probably applies well to many of the other superfluous fight scenes that are, I suppose, unavoidable in the comic-to-cinema genre.  In the graphic novel there is necessarily much more left to the imagination, as you get exposed to something like 8 (?) panels per page, rather than 24 frames per second.  An image of a fist smashing into a face, frozen in a comic panel, works in large part because, when reading, we can devote time to study the intricacies of the still image, and let our imaginations fill in (or perhaps, ignore) the rest of the fight.  There are parts of the fight scenes in which the director tries to get that effect, by doing the same super slow motion shit that he did in [i]300[/i] (a movie I thought straight up blew, by the way).  This gives the viewer the worst of both worlds: not enough time to actually study the picture up-close, as one might a still image, before being flung back to the kind of tedious, hyper kinetic, generic “blurs-moving-around-with-smacking-and-crunching-sound effects” type action that you can see in just about any fuckin’ movie these days.

Also, the love story thread between Batman-wannabe and that masked girl was pretty lame and, like much of the movie, riddled with cliches.  Oh, your identity is so caught up in your vigilante identity that you can’t even get a boner unless you’re caught up in the excitement of saving a slew of immigrants from a tenement fire?    Not interesting, Simpsons did it, etc.  The sex scene this sequence led to was another prime example of something that didn’t translate well to the big screen.  In a comic, you can give plenty of indications that people are fucking while leaving some subtlety and room for imagination.  Draw a titty here, show a couple panels of silhouettes of the couple in some sexual positions there, and you get the point across.  In the movie, they fuck for like 3 or 4 minutes while that “Hallelujah” song plays in the background.  He got a boner!  It’s a MIRACLE!  This scene is just cliche after cliche, essentially unironic porno without the fun stuff.  We see…their shadows and their stupid O-faces as if we’re supposed to be surprised that they’re enjoying sex.  And then their flying binocular ship shoots a jet of flames, presumably in place of him shooting a steaming load all over her face.  At that point you may as well cut to stock footage of the Washington Monument, a train going through a tunnel, or fireworks going off, as those would hardly be more cliched.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some elements of this movie I enjoyed.  The CGI was pretty damn cool in some spots, such as Dr. Manhattan creating some bigass contraption of gears and pinions and the like on Mars.  I suppose some of the ethical and moral questions the movie tries to raise (which aren’t exactly new, but remain interesting nonetheless) would be interesting if they were executed better.  Instead of trying to dig deeply into issues such as whether great ends justify ghastly means, or whether objective morality is correct or whatever, this movie just seems to use them as a pretense to show people catching fire, exploding into clouds of viscera, getting their limbs sawed off, getting their skulls split by a meat cleaver, etc. and having torrents of blood race across the floor.  I’d like to imagine the graphic novel explores these issues in a less perfunctory way.

Anyway, I’d give this movie on my new, contrived 5-leaf scale of “how much of that sweet sweet herb would I need to smoke to like this movie?”  (so, fewer leaves means a better movie, funnily enough)  I guess you may as well see this movie if y ou’re a big fan of the genre or you can’t get enough BIG BLUE DONGS ALL OVER THE GOD DAMN PLACE.  But don’t expect to have your mind blown.

Welp, I was going to talk about poker in this post, but, um, I guess I won’t because it’s already pretty damn long!  Stay tuned for some poker-related verbiage!

Sick beat for JCarver who got 2nd!

Just because jealousy and immaturity forces me to steal the spotlight from my BFF JCarver, I feel compelled to write a blog post.  Don’t expect much from this, it’s more a preview of what’s to come soon, when I devote a bit more time to writing down my thoughts on here.

If this were a Bad Religion song, the response to this entry’s title would be “yeah, right!”  But, somehow, I’ve managed not to off myself since the last time I posted, oh so many weeks ago.  I suppose I’ll try to be more regular with the updates in the future, in case people who don’t hang out in IRC, and thus don’t hear my daily whines, begin to miss reading these missives.  What’s happened since the January day on which I last posted?  I’ll probably write a separate post on each of the various aspects of my life, but for now, here are some short (or not so short, in the case of poker) summaries of what happened these last few dozen days.

Law School: Got first semester grades back, did journal tryouts, kept grinding with this semester’s classwork, got the summer internship in Vegas , which of course means I get to live with several great friends in the Vegas house, and obviously see many other poker friends throughout the summer.  I may even find time to play some weekend tournaments, or play cash games after work.  Even better, the work itself sounds exciting, and the people in the office come across as extraordinarily enthusiastic and passionate about the legal work they do.  Even though I’m working for free, I take pride in working for a cause I believe in strongly, working where I want to work, and not sacrificing my beliefs for a paycheck.

Poker: At some point in February, I finally put together my desktop and started using my big-ass 30″ monitor (which I got using FPPs) to play a lot more tables than I did before.   The idea was that if MSNL HU is dead, and MSNL 6m cash games are tough,  I could reduce variance and still get a similar hourly rate by playing 12 tables of 1-2 instead of, say, 4 tables of 3-6.  Luckily, I’ve gotten to the point where I can 12-table 6-max cash games fairly comfortably, where before I would completely eat shit if I had more than 4 tables running.  At some point in February I hit yet another poker nadir, playing PLO in class, running bad and losing enough to bust my Cake account.  Around that time, I also resolved to grind my way back up the 6m ladder on FTP, starting at 1-2.  In February, I played some low-to-mid 5-figure number of 1-2 hands and was fairly dissapointed with the results, ekeing out maybe 2 ptBB/100 as a winrate; even more disturbingly, I would often have my entire FTP bankroll spread across 8-12 tables.  I am not exactly the model of BR management I once was.   Since the beginning of March, I’ve played around 30k hands of 6m cash at 1-2 and 2-4.  I’ve been on a heater so far this month, pulling down around 8 ptBB/100 at 1-2 and 2-4 with absolutely no game selection.   While it feels great to have a modicum of confidence in myself (and a reasonable amount of money online to play 3-6 should I choose), there is still much to be accomplished.  PLO and donkaments continue to be my two Achilles heels: PLO because I straight up blow at it, and donkaments because I’ve been making some smallish mistakes and running pretty badly in some key spots.  Somehow, I think I am up a few bucks in tournaments on the month, so perhaps a big Stefan Prodanesque score (congrats to Davis, btw; I will give him one finger from my hand and it is my thumb, pointing up) is right over the horizon.

Personal: I’m probably getting fatter (despite not really gaining weight), due to junk food binges brought on by law journal tryouts, and being a generally sedentary lazy fucker.  Or maybe it’s just that my laundromat always shrinks my clothes.  I’ve played basketball a couple times recently, which I guess is OK for getting me in shape, it barely scratches the surfaces of what I ought to do to get in shape.  Law school has also made me smoke more cigarettes than ever, though I still can’t really stomach more than 2-3 per day (cigarettes, not packs), unless I’m drinking and then all bets are off.  I really feel like I’m a chipper, a term that my Criminal Law professor introduced me to when talking about an article he wrote on Drug Courts.  I don’t really get the kinds of cravings I think a nicotine addict would get; sometimes I do think “it sure would be nice to smoke a cigarette right now,”  but I don’t know if that really qualifies as a “craving,” and it certainly falls well short of nicotine withdrawal.  For instance, since I’ve been at my parents’ house for a couple days during my Spring Break (lame, I know), I didn’t really think about smoking until I started writing this.  Of course, now I’m thinking it’d be pretty relaxing to burn one.  Speaking of which, I haven’t burned any of that sweet sweet green since I was in the Bahamas.  I don’t really have cravings for that either, but there are definitely times (e.g. when playing tournaments, or watching TV, or watching movies, or listening to music, or playing xbox) where I would definitely prefer to be blazed on that .

Family: Still crazy as ever!  Always some sort of drama.

Reading: The law school and poker grinds have prevented me from reading for pleasure or non-legal edification lately.  Which is a shame, really.  Being in the Bahamas showed me how much I really do enjoy reading for pleasure (as opposed to reading for law school; not because the material is uninteresting, but rather because some of the casebooks are not written well).  I will get around to talking about The Black Swan if I can remember enough about it and if anyone is actually still interested in hearing my half-disintegrated thoughts on it.

TV: God damn do I ever love Hell’s Kitchen.  It’s a shame the best chef (Ji) sprained her ankle and had to quit, but I suppose that only gives more opportunities for Godron Ramsey to tear into the various clowntards that populate his show’s kitchens.  And, really, that’s what I’m watching it for anyway.  That said, I’m kind of pulling for Robert (the fat dude) because he’s fairly funny and not as big a fuckup as most of the other chefs.  House is solid, though getting a little more ham-handed than it used to be.  And, well, what the fuck else do I watch other than those two shows, movies, poker, and reruns of Simpsons/Seinfeld/Futurama?

Anyway, I guess I’ll go back to doing some law school writing.   Hopefully this coming Sunday will be a successful one, and I can finally stop whining for a while!