SippinCriss

I hope you’re all familiar with this beauty 90’s track from Soul II Soul, and it’s been in my head for the past couple weeks in getting myself prepared to my normal life, which can be difficult to fall back into when you go away from it for a while.

February was fantastic, I’ve never had more fun in a single month in my life. I went to Vegas, saw some of the best golfers in the world live, got to spend time with my family (except for my sister) hanging out here in Phoenix, doing the pink jeep tour in Sedona, checking out the Grand Canyon, Hollywood, Medieval Times, Disneyland and California Adventure, then up to Vancouver with some of my best friends to see an amazing Matt Mays concert, which was all capped off with Team Canada winning the gold medal in mens hockey and I was lucky enough to roam the streets of Downtown Vancouver afterwards. I spent some time yesterday youtubing reactions from Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal, if you’re Canadian I suggest you do the same, it will bring a smile to your face. It made me wish we had a camera set up where we were watching the game because it was total mayhem, grown men jumping up and down hugging and screaming, pretty sure there were even a tear or two shed… but then again there was a lot of dust in that apartment.

It’s time for me to get on my productive daily life grind, which should include 100 sng’s, 18 holes of golf w/ a couple hours of practice, and a 2 hr workout 3 days a week + cardio on my workout days off. Some days it’s hard to fit it all in even while making good use of time but it’s important I stick as close to it as possible. It’s pretty impressive how far off track you can get on vacation, “Sure I’ll have pizza 4 days in a row, I’m on vacation!” Luckily I don’t think I got too out of shape in a 3 week span so I should be able to get right back into form.

For you Stox guys who are reading my blog for the first time and wondering why I haven’t had any videos out recently, it’s because I’m a Canadian visiting the United States, and won’t be able to make any videos or do coaching until I return to Canada at the end of April. I’ve had a few questions about my golf as well, and my plans right now are to grind hard the next 3 months and then get through the Canadian Tour qualifying school at the end of May. Being in Phoenix and spending time with some solid players has given me a good idea of where my game needs to be to have success at the professional level, which is important and something I think a lot of guys like myself looking to make it as a professional don’t understand.

Something felt a little bit off from the beginning while I was hitting balls but I didn’t really sweat it too much. Again I made some crappy mental mistakes early on. I started writing down on the card what the errors were, and each time it was the fact I didn’t decide what I was going to do before I pulled the trigger which is kind of ridiculous. For example I had a 9 iron into the 4th green, I lined it up, got over the ball and realized the ball was above my feet so it was probably going to move left. Instead of getting out of the shot and starting over, I just nudged my alignment a little right. Occasionally you can get away with crap like this and end up hitting a half decent shot but it’s still ridiculous. I was out of control for about the entire round, hit 1 or 2 shots I was happy with which is weird based on how I’ve been playing lately. I started getting really upset, didn’t care, and didn’t want to be out there anymore. This upset me even further since there’s nothing I’d rather do than play golf, it was a vicious cycle. After I blasted my tee shot 8 zillion miles right on 16, I realized my grip was coming off of the club at the top. Once I realized that I started hitting it much better, had a lot more confidence and felt like I was in control again. 79 is obviously terrible and my worst score of the year but I’m glad it happened, had I gone around shooting 70-72 every day I probably wouldn’t have noticed the grip issue. Bad things are good.

Whewwwww. I grinded like a grindy grinder the first 2 days of this month. I was going for 400 games but only got in 375. By the end of it, I was mentally drained and actually physically tired I struggled to keep my eyes open even after I knew I was done. Mac and Jon left yesterday, and having things to myself is nice, but I was actually really lonely last night, it was weird. I can’t imagine just grinding grinding grinding and not doing anything else! I popped out 100 games today, and made $300 or so my last 14 games to get a profit on the day, ship. Here’s my garf:

dangit. thats $3600 below ev cuz you can’t tell.

weeeeeeeeeeee. I’m glad that’s over with. I’m hoping that’s the last time I have to deal with something like that poker wise. I am happy I got in 3k games, which is impressive for me, it ties my 2nd most volumous (is that a word?) month. I am not happy that I ran like a garbage can at $27s/$38s, but whatever. I got out of it, then back out of it again, which builds character I guess. I imagine almost every poker player says this and doesn’t follow through but I expect to put in a lot of volume this year, hopefully playing at least 2k games each month. In February that may be difficult to accomplish with all I have going on so I’m going to stay on my short term break from golf and grind out a bunch of games the first part of this week. Anyways, with all the FPP sats and bonuses I ended up still making $2145 this month, which sucks since I played so many hours, but overall it works out close to $20/hr, which is still winning so it’s not fair for me to complain about it too much. I actually had to clutch up the last 2 days of the month to even have a mini bankroll once I gave my staker his stake back. Had the stake ended Friday night I’d have been left with about a $100 roll, lolz. I’ve got about $860 to work with now though and should be able to run that all the way up to 4 figures if I’m lucky!! Wooo!!! I really didn’t appreciate how good $60/hr was in 2009 since I barely put any volume in, but boy oh boy do I long for that again, and I think it’s in there somewhere, just have to be patient with it. I think my hourly rate this month was probably in the $100/hr zone when I listened to Matt Mays and El Torpedo’s first album, maybe I’ll just have it on repeat for the rest of the year.

I’ve got some new, and pretty exciting things coming up in the next year or so. I was planning on moving back to Victoria and getting a house with Natalie and Lindon but a few things didn’t work out there, and Oliver suggested I move in with him in Courtenay. After we did some research on the nearby golf course:

We found out it would work just nicely. There’s a lot of good players there so I will get some nice games on the go, it’s 2.5km from Oliver’s place as well so that’s great. Oliver’s also quite good at golf so it will be nice to have him to talk about a bunch of different golf stuff when we take breaks from frenching eachother. The course where Canadian Tour Q-School is probably going to be at is only 40 minutes away as well, so ship it. I checked out the schedule for the rest of the tour and it looks pretty good. It will be a week in Vic, followed by Van, then Okanagan. One week break, then 3 straight in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. Another little break and then 4 straight in the Toronto area to round out the tour. The Canadian Open (PGA Tour event) is in there somewhere, and the thought of having a chance to play that event at some point in the future gives me a hard one. I’ve had my expectations ramped up a little too high lately, and while I’ve had some time to relax I’m realizing this is 4 months away. 4 months to work hard on my golf game is a long time, and my game will steadily improve so I need to remember to take it day by day and not beat myself if the 18 holes I played that day wasn’t tour quality. Oh also the sweet course we played a few weeks ago, Raven at Verrado, is only $3500 for an annual membership, so I’m definitely going to join there when I come back to play the Gateway Tour next winter.

I just started watching this show called the Mentalist, I’ve heard good things and it’s awesome so far so I’d recommend it if you want to watch a new TV series. Also watch Community, The League, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, … ummmm. Oh! Lost starts again in a couple days wooooo. If you haven’t gotten into Lost, stop reading this and sit yourself down for a week straight and get caught up.

Lastly, for you poker guys, please be nice to the fish. I can’t stand when I see someone hassling a poor player for making a poor play, they are there to have fun, socialize, and give us their money. It’s important that these guys have a good time and you’re possibly costing yourself money by having that poor fish get down on himself and play less, or not at all. I think most of us get upset at the ridiculous stuff we see all day (omg Q9 how can you call… omg 15:1 how do you fold) but just… stop it.

Ok, thanks for reading, talk soon. *hugz*

GAME SELECT. NOW!

I’m getting pretty fed up with the amount of regs in each set I’ve played this week. I understand a lot of guys play the $16s, and some people do it as a primary/secondary source of income. I don’t understand how someone can be smart enough to beat the games for a solid clip, yet be stupid enough to load games overtop of 3, 4, 5 or 6 regs! It’s usually fine in my books seeing 2-4 random regs who I have 1k hands on since they tend to stay pretty quiet and if I don’t know who they are then I can usually count on the fact that they are not great and just one of many of the mediocre regs, but what really bothers me is when GOOD, highly winning, sharkscope leaderboard, well known on 2p2 type of guys load on top of eachother, so now not only do I have to pay more attention to games where my expectation is already terrible I have to deal with the fact I’m constantly going to be getting my blind stolen, have my steals be 3 bet, get called light (properly) etc.

I am mad at you guys. Something seemed to change in 2010 and now table selecting doesn’t even seem to happen anymore. Obviously I would have to have a recent run of bad results to post this, which I’ve had (-$588 in last 150, $675 below EV). I can deal with running bad, I know it happens it’s no big deal. In good games I can run bad and still win a decent amount of money, but in awful games it doesn’t matter who you are when you run bad, you’re always going to lose.

On the bright side, the guys who have started to grind a lot more thanks to the new stellar rewards program should be fizzling out in February/March, and on top of that a lot of the mediocre regs are probably going to realize they best be moving down to the $6s, or get jobs at McDonalds, cuz if they don’t then it looks like those are going to be my two options

Ok, time for me to load another fresh set and play count the regs, ttyl.

Even though I’d be a lot happier if I had more of it. I think a lot of people, myself included, wish they have more money so they could “have more stuff” but once you have that stuff you usually don’t care for it that much. My glasses are almost useless because I have cleaned them with my shirt for the past year and apparently it wears down the protective layer, if you’ve ever read this before you know I want to buy golf clubs. Also, it would be nice to play in some pro events while I’m here to get me prepared for the Canadian Tour this year. All things I could do if I had more money, and I’m pretty sure I’d be happier, so, suck it money happiness guy!

Last night I was finishing a crappy set of poker after a crappy round of golf at an awwwesome golf course (Troon North in Scottsdale) and it was about 8:45 and I decided instead of working out and doing anything useful afterwards that I’d go to sleep. I hate when I have those wussy moments of weakness. With some help from my proctologist, I got up from my -2 buyin set and went hard on the workout for 2 hours, so that was good.

On Tuesday Mac, Jon and I played at Club West, where there is a Pepsi Tour event going on Sunday/Monday. It’s a pro tour, and the 2-day events are $480. There’s usually around 25-30 players, pays the top 1/3 of the field, and you have to generally come top 4 to actually earn any money. The guy who’s leading the money list right now used to play on the PGA Tour at some point, so the play is pretty good. Anyways, going along with what I had been saying lately I played my best round of Arizona golf and shot 68 (-4). What was weird is that I cost myself a few shots with badly hooked drives, 3 missed short putts, and missed out on the one greenside up and down chance I had, so the quality of my game outside of that was awesome considering.

I’ve only got 12 scores entered in the handicap computer, and the first batch was pretty pathetic, but I’m sitting at a +2.0 which is ok. The last time I was a +2.0 was in 2007 when I almost got on the Canadian Tour, but it was really difficult for me to find ways to improve then, and I didn’t have the capability to shoot better than 3 or 4 under. Now I feel like there is a lot of room for improvement and I am finally going to get comfortable shooting some really low rounds, so that’s positive.

Something that’s not so positive is that I’m never going to get a hole in one or hole a shot longer than 100 yards. I have had so many full shots barely miss going in this month it’s really starting to annoy me. I wish we had cameras for all of them because I could get a solid album of them. Here’s a few pics from our round on Monday at the Raven Golf Course @ Verrado, which was awesome!

Me chunking it to 30 feet on a par 3, spare tire almost gone!

My 8 iron shot from the fairway not going in the hole and nobody is surprised.

I’d live there I guess.

Look closely at the hole to see more proof of me not getting a hole in one.

I’m going to just play a lot of poker for the next few days, we’ve been driving all over playing different courses and it’s taken it’s toll on my poker volume, and my Friday/Saturday last week was really good, so I’m hoping the games will be soft again and I will get paid.

Thanks for reading Mom!

I’m usually happy though. Sometimes I have short term bouts of being in the 6-7/10 on the happiness scale. Yesterday I found out Matt Mays (Canadian musician, I <3 him) is playing 2 free shows in Vancouver on February 27th during the Olympics. I had told Kevin that I would probably be willing to fly back for a day or two if he played a Vancouver show and I could get a decent price on a plane ticket. Anyways I was super rattled that the show was on the 27th because my family is visiting me in Phoenix then… then I thought for a second and realized my Mom and brother fly out at 6:00 am… on February 27th. Thank you world. So it will be awesome, I’ll catch that flight with them and spend the night watching my favourite musician, twice, with my best friends. Today on the golf course I was thinking about all the awesome things I’m going to be doing on top of playing golf and poker every day, (jeep tour in Sedona, Grand Canyon, Phx zoo, California trip, Matt Mays, Canucks game in Phx March 10th) and it made me really appreciate how lucky I am to be able to do all of these things.

Since my low point on Friday morning, I have pumped out 1,000 games, made about $2400 and ran at $62~/hr before you include whatever few bucks/hr I make off FPP’s. “NEEDED IT!” I expect things to carry on in a similar fashion, but even if they do I have resigned myself to the May Q-School in Canada, and that’s fine.

The last couple weeks on the golf course I have started keeping track of my commitment over each shot I hit. A guy on 2p2 named Scott Fawcett who got his PGA card last year said that he started doing it, and during the 6 rounds in the final stage of Q-School he wasn’t committed over a shot 24 times. It’s hard to quantify how many shots that costs a player, but 5-10 is probably close. I wasn’t fully committed on 4 shots today. Wedge shot from a divot, a long putt, a short putt and a 3 wd on the very next shot. 4 was actually the best I’ve done in the 6 or so rounds since I’ve started tracking it, but at the same time it’s kind of inexcusable. The short putt was the only one that really cost me a shot, although the others decreased my chances of making the best possible score, so 4 cost me probably 1.5 shots today. On another day 4 could cost me a lot more than 1.5 so I definitely got a lot out of my round today (+2) on top of getting it up and down 8/10 times. I only hit 7/18 greens but I blame that on being a bit rusty from not playing the past couple days and it being super windy. I’ve been hitting the ball quite nicely lately, and now that my short game is back in form quickly I think scores are about to come. I’ve decided that I don’t want to consider playing the Canadian Tour unless I am at least a +3, so that as a minimum is my short term goal.

Just finished my first week doing TPI (m/w/f) and I feel awesome. I’m happy I quit P90X (sorry Kevin).

More good things to come.

It has been a long, hard grind (that’s what she said) this month, and I am finally getting myself a bit back on track.

SS is missing almost 100 games there, I am down $331 total in sng’s, and up $1285 in Stellar Rewards and FPP Sats, like Kevin says, gotta run good in something right. I just want to get back to my steady $60~/hr and NEVER HAVE A LOSING DAY AGAIN!! I’m excited to get back to my highest point of all time and I can put all this crap behind me. That’s the nice thing about playing $16s, each day you play you are probably close to your highest point ever, where when you play $60+ that moment comes every 1, 2, or 3 months.

I finally had a good round of golf last week. I started off hitting lasers at most flags, and missing 4 3-foot putts in the first 8 holes. My mental and physical routine was off with my putter, but I sorted it out and made 4 straight birdies from 9-12 and finished with a 70 (-2), which was nice considering I was +2 thru 8. I’ve felt like my game was at the level to put out good scores the last little while and nothing would happen so it was relieving to know I am capable of playing good golf for more than 2 holes at a time. I have a massive hard-on for playing golf right now, all I want to do is play 36 holes a day featuring a warm up and a practice session, but with 10 hours of daylight and playing poker and working out it just can’t happen, durn it. I haven’t played since Tuesday it’s been raining so hard here in Phoenix. Yesterday I think most golf courses around here were closed there was so much rain, so I’m going to put in another full poker day today and hopefully be a winner at sng’s for the month.

I’ve also come to realize that playing the Canadian Tour Q-School in San Diego at the end of March probably isn’t going to happen. I’m confident I would get my card, but the issue is money. I still haven’t bought new clubs yet, Q-School entry is $2800, then there are 4 straight tournaments in Mexico and I’m pretty sure expenses for a month in Mexico are not free. Luckily there is another Q-School in Canada before the 11 Canadian events, and that will give me more time to put together some cash and get my golf game even better. So unless something weird and crazy happens like I bink one of my monthly donkaments, I’ll be down here til the end of April living the busto dream. The average high temperate in Phoenix in April is 29, and the average high in Victoria is 12, so it works out fine.

Bye Mom.

First post of the year, woohoo! Just about everything here in Phoenix is going great. My first couple days back I was still stuck in holiday mode and I ended up eating junk and watching 300 episodes of The Office per day, but that was still pretty sweet anyways. Once I got started working out again I was in full golf/poker/workout mode. I was falling into a great groove with all three right before the holidays and I’ve kept it going nicely since I’ve been back. I managed to get myself into a solid daily schedule too, and I’m a type of person that needs that type of thing otherwise I end up like a lost puppy without a clue where to go or what to do. A standard day for me has been to wake up and play 50 sng’s, head out to the golf course for some practice and 18 holes til dark, home for dinner and 50 more sng’s, followed by whatever P90X workout I’m supposed to do then go to sleep. It doesn’t seem like much when I say it like that but I have barely any time to do “nothing” which is fine since I have nothing else to do other than waste time doing random internet things. Sometimes it’s kind of nice to not have a TV and a phone.

As for poker, I started this month on a 3,000 game stake for the $27s/$38s which I was excited about because I would be able to hit supernova by March and then I would be a rakeback champion along with an improved (I assumed) hourly. They went quite well off the start, I ran nicely and the games were soft, and then I just kept running into a wall, followed by a wall, followed by a wall, then a cliff that transformed into a neverending pit, so that has sucked. I’m down a bit over $1k on the month, but with $805 in FPP sats and bonuses I’ve managed to keep it close to breakeven. My HEM has missed a bunch of games but I am $2500 below EV over about 1100 games which is kind of sick considering it’s fairly low stakes. After I had my new worse day ever yesterday and lost around $800 my roll was getting pretty short so I figured I would just drop back to the $16s and crush away. It grosses me out a bit thinking that had I just stuck with $16s I’d be almost guaranteeing myself $6k/months with the volume I put in, but I was just unlucky to hit a bad patch on a short roll on a short term stake. Playing the $16s is going to help my life happiness as well. I normally separate my poker emotions from real life but I think it’s had a bit of an affect on me lately. I find myself getting upset on the golf course over trivial things, and generally acting like a baby out there, which I definitely wasn’t doing in November when things were going better in poker. The problem with poker right now is that I “need it” because I have a new set of golf clubs that I want to order immediately ($2500) and I have to pay before I order them, and they will take 4 weeks to get here. It’s making me mad just typing about it!!!! GIVE ME MONEY NOW I WANT MY GOLF CLUBS AND WANT TO RETIRE FROM POKER FOREVER!!!!! Sigh. On top of that I’ve been set on playing the Canadian Tour Q-School at the end of March in San Diego, and that costs $2800, along with the $30-$40k it will cost me to play on the Canadian Tour for the year. That 2nd part shouldn’t be a big deal though since I expect to be making cheques on top of playing poker on the road, but if I have to be cooped up in this place (IN PHOENIX, IN JANUARY) spending all my time playing poker so I can buy some golf clubs and play in golf tournaments the time I spend on golf will suffer and so will my game. In the next couple weeks, including today, I’m going to be busting out some 200 game days just so I can get money as fast as I can. Doing that for more than 2-3 days will completely rot my soul so I am going to make sure I get myself out on the course every couple days at least to stay sharp.

^^This is not completely accurate but it gives the general idea. I think I wasn’t playing that great at the start of the first dip and got into a bit of a snowball. Once I caught that and started focussing hard and playing well things didn’t want to co-operate with me, but that’s ok. I’ve mentioned this before but having downswings, or whatever negative thing happen to you can be nice sometimes because you can figure out where you were going wrong and be better the next time around.

I’m excited about the next little while, I just need to get back to making the steady $ I’m used to so I can do what I want, when I want. Phoenix is no place for a young man to be stressing balls.

Bye Mom.

On Sunday my bankroll was down to just over $400, just enough to grind my standard set of 25 $16s, then I went ahead and lost like a hundred bucks, so I had to go play some sats for the Sunday Million so I could use the $T (game 50). I’ve been playing the 6 man hyper turbo sats that jorj95 is always in with my FPP’s. Starting stacks are 10 BB’s and there are antes from the start, top 2 get seats and 3rd gets their FPP’s back. I played 4-5 a couple weeks ago and lost them all so that was a lot of fun. This time around it went much better with a seat and two 3rds, so I could survive another day. I’ve been in this spot so many times so it doesn’t really bother me much and I always get out of it even if I need a quick loan/stake. Poker is pretty cool like that, when you develop online friendships with guys passing around $1000 doesn’t seem like a big deal. To non poker players I’d imagine it would seem super sketchy. Anyways, my results have been a lot better and I’ve put in some ok volume the last 3 days, here’s a graph:

My ITM on this stretch has actually been lower than usual, but my 1st place finishes are so high it’s saved me a bit. I’m gonna go hit some balls then probably grind a few more sets after we workout tonight. Many happy returns!