-$450 - $630 = down $1080

Well, I booked another trip to LA for May 9-15, so I decided to take it easy until then and do anything that's not poker. Anyway, I'm going to play in town before I go to LA, so, more posts next week.

4/20 down $450
Yeah online poker. Wow, I'm a fool. The last live game I'm at Fashion offers to sell some of his money on Full Tilt to the table. For good reason, I haven't played online for about six months. And in the limpid afternoon of a sharp poker mind I can easily remember these good reasons and resist this offer. But, in the couple weeks I'm planning to have away from poker I of course start jonsing. I resist this urge until I get paid from the home game, and then the excitement of putting that money into paying off credit cards and a little back into my stock portfolio. And I come to the rationalization of how much can I really lose if I just go online, and play some very low stakes Omaha 8? I mean, I need to practice this game because I will be profitable at it if I keep learning more about it, right? Sure!!! So, I email Fashion, ask for $500, and in about ten minutes I have the money in my Full Tilt account.

So why am I a fool? Well, I always lose online. My first of about disaster in my poker life was a $10k online disaster. It went like this... I decided that I wasn't going to get a job, and just play poker for a living. I put a lot of cash that I had from working into Party Poker. I started winning pretty consistently at the 5-10 NLH game. Then I moved up to the 10-20 game, and had a huge win in my first session, for like five thousand. Soon after that, with about $7k in my online bankroll, I felt invincible, stopped thinking too much, started playing two tables at once, and went on crazy tilt from a couple suck outs, and in my first tail spin, that I couldn't recover from, until I lost everything I had on there. Although the recent US internet gambling ban is incredibly stupid, it was a welcome for me, because of it I wound up quitting online play as I wasn't able to get any money into my account easily.

So, I resist for a couple days, but then it kind of seeps into everything, as each time I open my Window's start menu, of course the only icon that I notice is the one for Full Tilt. And of I start to play a little. 50 cents a dollar, limit Omaha 8. I win a little, move up to 1-2, win a little more. My friend asks for some money online, I give it to him, and he starts to play. And then how can I resist playing at a holdem or PLO table with him? Impossible! So I play a few of those games with him and lose a few hundred there.

I come to the realization that I'm winning on at limit Omaha 8, so I say “why don't I move up to the 3/6 game to get my money back? In fact... Why don't I play two 3/6 tables at once!!!” Yeah... yeah..... So eventually I wind up at home on my couch playing late into the night, drinking wine, and losing, and losing. I played good for a little while, but then played until like 3AM and got too drunk and tired to care enough to play good. I think I kept rationalizing my stupidity with things like “it's shorthanded, I should be playing this many hands... These are the kind of swings you should expect...” Etc. I shut the thing off when I have $60 left in my account, (after $40 of bonuses), and feeling like a complete moron.

I don't think that I shouldn't ever play online. However, I figure out how to be as disciplined about it as I am in person. I go through a lot of stuff to get ready for a game, and the fact that I'm just playing so casually online, whenever I don't feel like doing something else is of course a complete recipe for disaster. I do like the Omaha 8 online though, and I think I could be good at it.

4/26 down $630
Well, I have a pretty nice apartment now, and so I was pretty psyched to have people over to have a home game here. Sent an email out to most of the crew who I started playing cards with like five years ago (man, I'm getting old...). It was a good game and a nice seeing the old gang.. I wanted to play low limit stupid games like Red Ass, Auction, GUTS!!! But, of course as all these guys who still play from back in the days have started gambling for real money at holdem, the small game I had planned winds up being almost entirely 1-2 PLO. And wow, do I suck at this game, and these guys aren't all that bad at it. I get a bit of bad luck, but for the most part, I just throw money away raising with the second nuts and other acts of complete stupidity.

Anyway, everyone who played reads this page, or is at least aware of it. So, hello everyone. I'm not going to tell you what I think your flaws are. But, know that PLO vengeance shall be mine...